Netflix’s ‘Bird Box’ Originally Showed Monster in Deleted Scene

Netflix’s Bird Box has set records and terrified audiences since its Dec. 21 release, but it was almost even scarier.

The antagonistic force in Bird Box is the monsters of the film, which are never shown. The creatures also do their best to never see the monsters because if they do, they will die.

However, the minds behind the movie almost showed viewers a glimpse of the terrifying beings due to a producer’s demand.

“There was a time when one of the producers was like, ‘No, you have to see something at some point’ and forced me to write essentially a nightmare sequence where Malorie experiences one in that house,” Eric Heisserer, the film’s screenwriter, told Bloody Disgusting.

To top that tease from Heisserer, star Sandra Bullock, who plays protagonist Malorie Hayes, described the beast as it was shown to her while filming this aforementioned nightmare sequence.

“It was a green man with a horrific baby face,” Bullock said. “It was snake-like, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to see it when it first happens. Just bring it into the room. We’ll shoot the scene.’ I turn and he’s like this [growling at me.] It’s making me laugh. It was just a long fat baby.”

Due to this less-than-ideal response, director Susanne Bier says they had no choice but to edit that scene out of the movie. She even joked that it would have been better suited for Saturday Night Live than the final version of Bird Box.

“It so easily becomes funny,” Bier said. “We actually shot that and spent a lot of energy on, but every time I saw it, I was like this is not going to be tense. It’s just going to be funny. At first, Sandy was like, ‘I don’t want to see it’ because she thought it was scary. Then it was like, ‘Don’t show it to me because [I’ll laugh].’ Every time I did it, I was like, ‘S—, that’s a different film.’”

She continued, “We’re going to deliver it to Saturday Night Live. Whatever those beings are, they tap into your deepest fear. Everybody’s deepest fear is going to be different from the other person. I think to suddenly take upon a concrete shape in order to illustrate that becomes weak. Where the conceit is really strong, then trying to illustrate it is kind of almost meaningless. So it would have been the wrong decision.”

Bird Box is now streaming on Netflix.

Photo Credit: Netflix / Saeed Adyani