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The movie is neither amazing or terrible, its also not well balance but its the suspense and parts of the movie left to the imagination that I think makes it a good watch, probably why it became such a good movie to watch for a lot of people. I have come to the conclusion that movies that go viral from Streaming platform are not would not be world wide hits if they were on Cinema, the main reason for this is because of the amount of eye balls watching that same movie, there are way more people who stream movies online from platforms like Netflix than those who go to the theaters, but putting all the social media nonsense aside the movie does have some good acting, proper production and its an interesting different approach than most end of the world movies on the last decade.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2737304/
- Platform: Netflix
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As I mention during the INTRO, the premise of the movie is the most interesting part and what sparks most of the audience imagination most about how the monsters actually look because no body can see the damn things without going crazy and killing themself but there is also a big drama aspect when the main character Malorie the main character who is pregnant during the first part of the timeline and not convinced she is cut out for been a mother, she was even offered for her baby to be adopted. Its during this times too when reports start to come out about suicides happening around the world, almost like epidemic.
If you haven't seen the movie you might be asking yourself then how do humans became aware of the monsters themself? here is where the movie has similarities to when people are actually bite by infected or zombies, what ever is you favorite flavor of apocalypse trigger. This time its not by biting but by watching, all people had to do was to watch at one of the monsters to intermediately loose it and become suicidal, some even failing at the first attempt to kill themself and right away looking for their second chance to end their life. It is the case of when Malorie and her sister Jessica witness people suddenly killing themselves during very chaotic scenes across the city, but its Jessica herself who sees something that makes her eyes glass over before she crashes their car and walks into the path of an oncoming truck, just like crashing was not enough to end her life, she just went to her second chance to achieve her death. Through all this scenes the movie doesn't feel like relying on CGI overload but instead use a more potent strategy to generate the deep horror feel, audience imagination.
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After some chaotic scenes and experiences after the outbreak, Malorie gets rescue from the street by a man called Tom, consider she was still pregnant. The movie goes back and forwards through two timelines from before and after the outbreak. Tom takes Malorie to a shelter house with a group of strangers who they all have their own personalities that contrast very much with each other, they come to the conclusion that whatever is causing people to commit suicide can only affect them if they look at it directly, reason why they decided to cover up all the windows and only go outside blindfolded. At the house most of the drama feels extremely predictable as personalities start to unfold and develop, most of them become very cliche and I still can't understand why the kids are called "Boy" and "Girl", yes I know its the obvious but whats the meaning behind it? it was how Malorie felt at the time, she didn't wanted to get too emotionally attach because things were going to get traumatic for everyone.
As it was expected through the entire movie Sandra Bullock carries the entire cast and the movie on her shoulders, everything goes around her, I would say probably one of her strongest dramatic performances in years, similar to Never Let Go (2024) was for Halle Berry although not any of this two movies were great hits outside of streaming platforms, still great dramatic performances. Over all in my opinion even at looking stupid most of the actors on the movie did a good job, Sandra Bullock felt very natural at every moment during the movie, from been happy to angry, to scared to death, she also goes through a transformation as any other human during such hard time from an emotionally distant mother to a hardened survivor who will do anything to protect her children even when her methods seem harsh or too primitive at times. I have to praise her work because during most of the movie she have this rawness to her performance that makes you believe she is actually living through this nightmare, what makes me remember the first "A Quiet Place" a true living nightmare, specially in the river scenes where her fear and determination to go through any obstacle feels very real, and her almost commands or orders she gave to her children gives you the feeling of "sht is real no bs.
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The ending of the movie goes along very well with the title and poster that was massively advertise, as the entire journey takes Malorie and her children to reach the precise location they have been given, they discover the safe haven place is actually a school for the blind that has been turn into a sanctuary, this makes perfect sense as blind people would be immune to the visual effects of the creatures giving them the unique advantage in this new reality they living in, lets take in consideration that those who have been blind for most of their part develop way more other senses to they point that they can still live a regular and independent live.
The sanctuary is an open air community full of birds with both blind and sighted survivors who have created such a peaceful environment. There is one aspect that I mention above, how Malorie waited to get to the sanctuary to name her children. The girl was named Olympia after her birth mother, to make things clear Malorie biological children was only "Boy" who she named Tom after the man who rescue her, and "Girl" she adopted after her biological mother died. The fact that she named the children after finally arriving to the sanctuary wrap things up quite nice finally embracing her role as their mother and allowing herself to build up an emotional attachment she have been avoiding all this time.
Because of it flaws, mostly when they were at the shelter house that takes a big part of the movie I cant gives the movie a score higher than 6.5/10, I believe it is still entertaining enough to keep you watching but if they could re write that part things would be different. The premise is a good twist to other similar movies but still most of the audience would feel its related to more classic post apocalyptic movies if not connect them directly. Aside from the premise is the action and the ending that makes it worth watching specially for a streaming platform movie like Netflix, giving the impression that its a real gem but in fact is an above average movie and not so a big hit like social media said it was, I would say all the buzz was because social media went hard on it with memes and talking about the psychological horror aspect of the movie, having Sandra Bullock as the main actor also help this social media push since she is consider a great actress.
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