‘Bird Box’ Viewers Think Netflix Channeled ‘The Happening’ and ‘A Quiet Place’

Bird Box has been a massive success for Netflix, but some viewers think it channeled both The Happening and A Quiet Place quite a bit.

The film follows a woman named Malorie — played by Sandra Bullock — as she and her two children make their way through a post-apocalyptic wilderness while avoiding invisible creatures who cause their victims to kill themselves if they are seen.

Over on Reddit, one user noted that “Bird Box, Hush, and A Quiet Place are basically the movie versions of See No Evil, Speak No Evil, and Hear No Evil.”

“Each one focus on a different sense to overcome great thats, and as such they are depraved of important human senses that may lead them to death if they use it,” the user added. “I found it pretty funny when I realized they were very similar in premise, but each of them were executed in incredibly different ways to severely different outcomes.”

“They are basically trying to cram The Happening and The Road into one movie and it leaves both sides wanting,” another user commented. “It’s much better in book format that way, not in movie.”

Arguably, saying that Bird Box copies A Quiet Place does have one flaw, which is that Bird Box was a book first. That book of the same name was published in 2014, and was written by Josh Malerman. A Quiet Place was not released until early 2018.

The comparisons to The Happening have a bit more ground to stand on, as the similarities are pretty glaring.

Both films feature people on the run from an invisible force that causes people to commit suicide in shocking and gruesome ways when exposed to the unseen force.

While Bird Box certainly has a lot in common with other apocalyptic horror films that came before it, that has not deterred fans one bit. It was recently revealed the movie has already been streamed by nearly 50 million Netflix accounts since landing on Netflix only one week ago.