Creating an atmosphere of horror in the form of sensory deprivation is common in thrillers, and can be both a victim and a perpetrator, such as the deaf-mute female writer in "Hush" and the latter such as the blind veteran in "Don't Breathe" (Don't Breathe).
"Blindfold Your Eyes" poster
Last year, two thrillers shaped the film's worldview in a similar way, and the two were often compared after their release, but in terms of the evaluation of European and American film critics, the reputation of "A Quiet Place", which was released in the first half of 2018, was significantly better than "Bird Box" launched on Netflix in the second half of the year.
Broadly speaking, "A Quiet Place" and "BlindfoldEd" are both post-apocalyptic themes of thrillers, and both films set a kind of sensory deprivation, that is, if this physiological organ is used, it will suffer a catastrophe. "A Quiet Place" is related to sound, once a person makes a sound, he will be captured by alien creatures, while in "Blindfold Your Eyes", people will commit suicide as long as they see the mysterious it.
Sandra Bullock on the set of BlindfoldEd
The so-called "devil is hidden in the details", most of the world's thrillers are difficult to justify themselves, especially in this kind of sensory forced deprivation of the film, but as long as the logic can be relatively consistent, or let most of the audience only immerse themselves in the horror atmosphere when watching the movie, ignoring the irrationality of it, then such a movie should be considered a success.
From this point of view, "A Quiet Place" and "Blindfold Your Eyes" are basically qualified, but loopholes are inevitable. Forbes magazine's film review of "Blindfold Your Eyes" actually applies to "A Quiet Place" - the film contains all aspects of the thriller routine, good and bad, it makes people feel credible, fearful, and in large part because of the thinness of the character modeling.
Stills from "Blindfold Your Eyes", in which the bird is equivalent to "the canary in the coal mine" and can predict the danger, from which the English title "Bird Box" (Bird Box) comes
I wrote a review when "A Quiet Place" was released, and here I will elaborate on the gains and losses of "Blindfold Your Eyes". In fact, the former can be classified as a monster movie, while the latter is a women's movie. This is of course attributed to Sandra Bullock, the star of "Blindfold Yourself," who made the story quite a "big heroine", and naturally, the ubiquitous feminist elements of the film are also related to the film's director, Suzanne Bill (who won an Emmy Award for Director for "Night Manager").
Director Suzanne Bill (the middle woman) on the set of Blindfold You
Many people's negative evaluations of "Blindfold Yourself" stem from the so-called "unintelligible cloud", that is, the mysterious power of killing people in the movie is invisible from beginning to end. (Whether the image of the devil drawn by the madman is really the mysterious power itself, the film does not give a clear answer)
The devil in the madman's pen, but "Blindfold Your Eyes" does not really embody the mysterious power
But in fact, if this mysterious power is used as a symbol, it may be possible to understand the feminist elements of "Blindfold Your Eyes". At first, Sandra's Mallory is pregnant, but she looks like she's going to be a single mother, compared to another pregnant woman, Olympia—married, military sister-in-law, housewife.
Stills from "Blindfold Your Eyes"
Mallory's role is essentially a professional woman who takes on parenting responsibilities independently, constantly fighting against the invisible ceilings of society on her own. Mallory, unable to juggle career and family, for a long time named her son "boy" and Olympia's daughter "girl". However, she is still a mother, and when she has to choose whether to navigate in the turbulence, whether to be her own son or her adopted daughter, she cannot give up. Until the end, her nature was liberated, and she gave her son the name of her dead boyfriend Tom, and her daughter Olympia.
Because of this, "Blindfold Your Eyes" has largely transformed from the end of the world to a female psychology, it weakens the horror level of the film itself, most of the characters in the film become a functional existence, just to create an unfavorable situation that the protagonist must deal with, the thriller section is too deliberate, and the protagonist's aura is too obvious, and Mallory's way of getting through the difficulties is not difficult.
Cover of the original novel of the same name
If this film does not deliberately pursue the "big heroine", perhaps the evaluation of European and American film critics will not be so bad, the novel of the same name was published in 2014, and as soon as the book was listed, it was recommended by Stephen King. In the book "Blindfold Your Eyes", there are three kinds of people in the setting after the mysterious power appears, namely ordinary people (usually open eyes and die), crazy people (not only do not die, but also constantly hunt down ordinary people with closed eyes), and blind people (natural immunity).
In the movie, it is of course a bit of a pity that this setting is only used as a means to promote the development of the plot, and it is not unfolded into the main line of the story.
Josh Mallelman ( left ) of "Blindfold Yourself" is also the lead singer of a band called "The High Strung"
There are many logical irrationalities in both the film and the novel, for example, if a person staring at the monitor screen can lead to suicide, then the Mallory sisters at the beginning of the film watching the NEWS about many supernatural suicides in Russia should actually commit suicide.
On Douban, "Blindfold Your Eyes" has a higher rating (7.1) than "A Quiet Place" (6.3), which may be related to the number of scores, the former as of March 1, less than 20,000 ratings, while the latter has nearly 190,000 ratings, personally think that "Blindfold Your Eyes" rating will fall below 7 points, because it is too conceptual first, but it is not good in materialization.
However, to digress, the publicity of "Blindfold Your Eyes" deserves to be learned by domestic counterparts, at the end of last year, Netflix Australia Company engaged in a so-called "blindfold your eyes" network challenge, inviting netizens to play games blindfolded, the result of this challenge quickly out of control, some netizens blindfolded the street, although Netflix quickly tweeted to call on netizens to pay attention to safety, but in January this year, a 17-year-old girl in Utah, usa, blindfolded driving led to a serious traffic accident.