Boy and Girl's superpowers, whether the creatures mean any harm and how they affect animals
are just some of the crucial details revealed in the original Bird Box book that don't make
it into the movie.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and today I'm explaining seven major plot points that
the Netflix film Bird Box changed from Josh Malerman's novel.
Obviously, film and book spoilers ahead!
If you've seen the various Daredevil Bird Box memes, you might have been struck by how
the Marvel hero's superhuman radar sense would have helped him in the post-apocalyptic world
of Bird Box.
But the Bird Box novel actually explored a similar idea in detail with Boy and Girl becoming
extra-sensitive to sounds and super-skilled at echolocation.
In the book, Malorie ruthlessly raised the two children to never open their eyes, and
when they were babies she'd stand over the pair and when they woke up, she would smack
them with a fly swatter if they opened their eyes or reward them with food if they kept
their eyes closed.
In the movie, we often see Boy and Girl indoors with their eyes open.
Although there is a very short scene where we see Malorie teaching the kids to use stones
to figure out how close an object is.
"Listen."
"When they're louder, you're in an open space.
Do you hear that?"
"But if they're softer, something is very close."
But in the books her training is much more extensive.
In the book version of the river trip, Malorie uses the children's' heightened abilities
to help her navigate by identifying sounds and nearby objects.
In fact, Boy's hearing and echolocation skills are so sharp that he's able to detect when
one of the creatures is nearby and when it's moved on; and both he and Girl can also sense
subtle changes in Malorie's emotional state just from her breathing.
By the way, in the book, Malorie is so fearful of the children accidentally looking at a
creature that there's a chapter where she almost pours paint thinner into their eyes
to blind them so they can't ever be tempted to see.
Now, I mentioned how in the book, Malorie and the children encounter one of the creatures
while on the river.
It's a terrifying moment, because the three of them have just been hit by a flock of suicidal
birds and Boy has just heard that something is right there with them.
The thing moves around the boat and then it starts to slowly pull Malorie's blindfold
off her face.
Malorie is terrified but she puts her hand on the blindfold and tells the creature "No.
This is mine."
The creature seems to let go of the blindfold and then moves away until Boy tells her it's
behind them now.
This up-close encounter, which doesn't make it into the movie, raises the question of
whether the creatures deliberately mean any harm.
There's no doubt in the book or the movie that gazing upon them is lethal to most people,
but the novel spends more time exploring ideas about what they really are.
In the book After the creature lets go of Malorie's blindfold, she remembers something
that Tom said which is that "Maybe they mean us no harm.
Maybe they are surprised by what they do to us.
It's an overlap […] Their world and ours.
Just an accident."
What Tom seems to be suggesting is that the creatures are probably from another world,
maybe even another dimension and they accidentally arrived due to some kind of cross-dimensional
rupture.
Also, book-Malorie often refers to or thinks of the creatures as "infinity" because, as
Tom also said, "whatever they are, our minds can't understand them.
They're like infinity, it seems.
Something too complex for us to comprehend."
In the movie, we get various hints as to what the filmmakers maybe thought the creatures
represented and they seem to suggest a more evil, perhaps demonic-like force.
Charlie listed a series of malevolent spirits and entities during his speech about what
he called the Endgame for humanity.
And in the final scenes of the movie, the monster seemed to be actively hunting Malorie
and the children in the forest, which is quite different to how it left her alone in the
book when she ordered it to stop.
Douglas is a new character created for the movie and John Malkovich plays the abrasive
role really well.
Some of Douglas's traits are inspired from the book character Don who, like Douglas,
is generally not keen on letting new people into the house and opposes letting in both
Olympia and Gary.
However, in the books, Don later becomes friends with Gary who tells him stories about people
who've opened up the blinds in their homes and suffer no harm.
The pair ends up discussing ideas such as "the creatures can't cause harm to someone
who is prepared to see them".
Book-Malorie is very suspicious of Gary and snoops around his belongings discovering a
notebook inside his briefcase.
The notebook, like Gary's drawings in the movie, reveals his state of mind with Malorie
finding sentences written left to right, right to left, top to bottom and even in spirals.
She also discovers some ideas in the notebook that betray what Gary is really up to and
indicate he's likely already had encounters with the creatures.
For example, he writes: "To know the ceiling of man's mind is to know the full power of
these creatures."
"But how to prove it to them?
How to make them believe?
I will remove the drapes and unlock the doors."
Gary ends up getting kicked out of the house, however, we later discover that Don secretly
let him stay, hidden away in the cellar.
By the time Malorie and Olympia give birth, Don is thoroughly brainwashed by Gary, and
Don opens up the blinds in the house, which results in the death of everyone except Malorie.
Unlike the film, Tom also dies at this point in the novel.
By contrast, in the movie, Douglas is sceptical of Gary throughout and even attempts to shoot
him to protect everyone; however, he ends up dying at Gary's hands.
Overall, the subplot with Gary runs for much longer in the book and his reappearance when
Malorie and Olympia give birth is a huge surprise as they'd assumed he'd left the house a while
ago.
Something the book provides more detail on is whether the creatures can also affect animals
and there are some grizzly passages which prove that yes, they can.
For example, there's an especially horrific scene where Malorie and a dog she's with encounter
a creature and the poor dog kills itself.
Another particularly bloody scene in the book occurs on the river trip when a flock of birds
see one of the creatures.
The birds go insane, attack each other and kill themselves which sends down a wave of
dead, bloodied birds onto the boat, spattering all over Malorie and the children.
Given the movie toned down some of the more horrific elements from the novel, I can see
why these animal suicides also weren't included.
Birds coo when Gary arrives.
Another detail the movie changes from the original book is Malorie's decision about
who should look so that they can safely navigate the river.
The film spends a good bit of time building up to Malorie's dilemma of choosing which
child will take on the potentially suicidal mission of looking when they reach the rapids.
It's a heart-breaking moment with some great acting by the young actress who plays Girl.
"I'll do it."
Though, of course, Malorie decides against the plan and tries to figure out a way for
everyone to survive.
In the book, however, they don't have to travel through any river rapids.
Instead, Malorie's predicament is that she needs to look when the river splits into four
channels as she has to take the second from the right in order to make it to the sanctuary.
Book-Malorie actually plans to look very quickly herself when this moment comes, but it's just
as much of a dangerous moment as what happens in the film, because it comes just as their
boat bumps into the creature I mentioned earlier.
Although her time in the film is short, Malorie's sister, Jessica, played by Sarah Paulson,
certainly makes an impact given the rapid, horrifying nature of her death after seeing
one of the creatures.
Jessica's early demise quickly isolates Malorie and demonstrates just how high the stakes
are.
That works for the movie, however, in the book, Malorie's sister, whose name is Shannon,
survives a lot longer as the apocalypse doesn't happen so suddenly.
In fact, Malorie and her sister hunker down at their home for several months until one
day the corner of a blanket covering a window comes loose and Shannon sees one of the creatures.
The loss of her sister makes Malorie feel vulnerable, so she drives to a home that's
acting as a "safe house" where people are trying to survive together.
The movie understandably wants to set the tone much more quickly, so brings on the apocalypse
in a very short timeframe, and, on top of that, rather than a place organised to take
people in for shelter, Greg's house is simply a normal home that a few survivors are lucky
enough to find, more or less randomly.
Bird Box ends on a fairly optimistic note when Malorie, Boy and Girl arrive at the School
For The Blind and discover that Dr Lapham has also made it there.
In the book, although Malorie and the children do reach the safety of the school, the river
journey has been even more harrowing than in the movie, with Malorie getting slashed
in the shoulder by a wolf and also passing out at one point.
And the book's final chapter is also much darker and bittersweet because what Malorie
discovers at the school is that some of the residents have gouged out their own eyes so
they can't be tempted by the monsters.
In the novel, Rick tells her that many years earlier the school's security was much weaker
and a creature managed to break into the building resulting in many deaths.
The community then decided to blind themselves to avoid any further risk from the creatures,
although since then they've improved their security and now new arrivals no longer do
that.
By the way, the original screenplay for the movie also had a different, but similarly
horrific, alternate ending to the one we saw in the final film, and you can tap here for
all the details on that plus other deleted scenes from the movie.
So, what did you think of Bird Box?
And if you've read the book, how do you feel about the way it was adapted?
Let me know in the comments below!
If you're new here and enjoyed this then do subscribe and hit the bell to get all my new
videos.
Coming up next week I'll have videos on Glass and in the meantime you can tap left for seven
monstrous things you missed in Bird Box or tap right for the movie's alternate ending
and deleted scenes.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!