Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor has become known lately for his incredible film and TV scores, but the iconic industrial rocker recently ripped Netflix’s Bird Box film, which he worked on, calling it “a f—ing waste of time.” The horror/thriller debuted on Netflix late last year, and quickly become a widely talked about film, albeit often divisive among critics and fans. Recently, Reznor sat down with Revolver magazine to talk about his career in music, and film scoring, but when the topic of Bird Box came up, he unleashed his true, unfiltered feelings.
Having worked on the project with his frequent collaborator Atticus Ross, Reznor explained, “When we got immersed in it, it felt like some people were phoning it in. And you’re stuck with a film editor who had real bad taste. That’s kind of our barricade to getting stuff in the film.”
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He went on to say that “the final icing on the s— cake was we were on tour when they mixed it. And they mixed the music so low, you couldn’t hear it anyway. So it was like, that was a … [Laughs] That was a f—ing waste of time.” Reznor later joked, “Then we thought, no one’s going to see this f—ing movie. And, of course, it’s the hugest movie ever in Netflix.”
The rock legend wasn’t entirely wrong about the film, either, as the Neilson group previously backed up Netflix’s claim that Bird Box was the most watched original film during first week release, at the time, with 26 million users having watched the film in its first week of release. The ratings-measuring organization shared that based on their calculations from Dec. 21 to Dec. 27, Bird Box was the the biggest film in the United States.
Bird Box is a post-apocalyptic story about a woman (played by Sandra Bullock) trying to navigate her way through the wilderness while trying to protect two children and avoid unseen creatures that have devastated the Earth by causing their victims to commit suicide.
The film’s director, Susanne Bier, previously opened up to io9 about the film, sharing just why she chose to keep the monsters invisible.
“I’ve always felt the point in scary movies before you see the monster is the most scary. Once you saw the monster you were like, ‘Oh, really.’ So I wanted to make a movie which had the suspense of that moment for the two hours,” Bier admitted.
“There’s something out there. It taps into our deepest fear and everybody’s individual deepest fear is different from the others,” she continued. “But we’re not going to see that because you can’t really do that. [So] how can we do something which maintains the suspense without ever revealing it? That was a real challenge but also something really exciting.”
Bird Box is still available to stream on Netflix.
