[Note: I haven’t read the book, so please consider this a review of the film and only the film. Also, SPOILERS ABOUND.]

Bird Box, the new Netflix original film, is a waste. It’s a waste of a concept, a waste of a tremendously interesting visual motif, and…well, I can’t exactly say it was a waste of time to watch it. After all, I’m writing about it.

Let’s start with the concept. Unknown creatures have ravaged earth’s population by causing mass suicides, which they apparently induce merely by allowing themselves to be seen by their victims. I say “allowing themselves to be seen” because they seem awfully camera-shy. Even at moments when we are clearly told that one of the creatures is creeping up behind an unsuspecting character, the evidence of their presence is limited to spooky sound effects, mysteriously levitating leaves, and sometimes a shadow that reminds me of the 8-bit ghouls from Ghost.

And let’s be clear: apart from a single instance that I can recall, these aren’t creeping, corner-of-the-screen affairs. When the leaves levitate, they do it right in the center of the frame. This creates—unintentionally, I think—the impression that the creatures are frequently turning themselves invisible for no apparent reason.

Regardless, the idea of an unknown force causing people to commit suicide isn’t inherently a bad one. The premise does bear some resemblance to “The Happening,” M. Night Shyamalan’s…thing?…but the performances here are more committed, and the tone is darker despite far less gore than Shyamalan’s film. Unfortunately, this team of capable actors—including Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, and Trevante Rhodes of “Moonlight” fame—can’t save a film that doesn’t know why it exists.

The film’s “arc,” such as it is, intends to trace Malorie’s (Bullock) path from nervous and rather unwilling soon-to-be mother to brave, loving, and accomplished mother of two children, all while traveling down a perilous river toward the promise of safety. But the film wastes so much time on a completely irrelevant series of flashbacks that we simply don’t see Malorie and the children together enough to form much of an emotional investment. Even when they are together, Malorie’s stern consternations and survivalist mentality usually come off as the sort of tough love you would expect in a post-apocalyptic environment, rather than as the excessively cold or harsh attitude the film seems to believe it is portraying.

Early on, I thought things were going in a much more promising direction with the theme of motherhood. Malorie’s initial conversation with her sister implies an unhappy upbringing and a fear of inheriting a similarly distant relationship with her own child. This is a very relatable, real-world issue. Not all mothers immediately connect with their children, and many more have deep fears and anxieties about becoming mothers.

If the film had built upon this groundwork at any point during its two-hour runtime, we might have been able to identify with a mother who is not only fighting to keep her children safe, but is also struggling with learning to love them. I mean, come on. Malorie literally names the children Girl and Boy. The characters seem ready-made for that story, but the one we got instead is far more concerned with developing John Malkovich as an ultimately irrelevant villain within a pointless cabin fever storyline.

The resulting experience is like watching two separate films that have been crudely mashed together, with plot and character threads that simply fall into nowhere land. Why are the creatures (or demons, if one of the clunkiest exposition scenes ever put to film is to be taken literally) killing humans, and why now? Why are we immediately shown that Malorie is an artist in the second scene of the film, only for that trait to never be referenced again in any capacity? Why, if Malorie’s upbringing is so important to her character, is that background not further developed beyond a throwaway line that explains why she knows her way around a shotgun? This is to say nothing of the numerous plot holes, of which I will mention only one: the creatures are inexplicably afraid of the interiors of buildings, and each and every character seems to implicitly know they are safe indoors despite clear evidence that the creatures are physical entities that can interact with physical objects. In other words, why can’t the creatures open doors?

Then there is the most baffling question of all: Why does the film place so much importance on the “revelation” that Girl is not Malorie’s biological child? Again, the film seems to have thought about going in several directions and decided, in the end, to choose no direction at all. You can almost see the wheels turning late in the film, when Malorie and the children are approaching dangerous rapids in their canoe while blindfolded. Malorie surmises that someone must remove their blindfold and expose their eyes to the creatures in order to help guide the canoe through the rapids. It must be one of the children, because if Malorie dies, they all die. The film clearly wants us to think she is leaning toward choosing Girl, and in a different film, even the suggestion of that possibility would be compelling. We have been told quite emphatically that Girl is not her biological daughter, and even the most idealistic among us can empathize with Malorie choosing to keep her son safe.

But like the film itself, Malorie decides that no choice is better. She rows blindly through the rapids, the boat predictably capsizes, and everyone makes it out okay despite being unable to see (Malorie’s superhuman ears manage to hear Girl ringing a bell while she is floundering half-submerged in roaring water).

The film completely sidesteps the dilemma it has raised, perhaps thinking Malorie’s admittedly brave refusal to choose is a key moment in the motherhood arc it forgot to develop. Worse, her decision carries no consequences. She risks everything rather than choose one child over the other, but all she sacrifices are a few moments of fear.

What could have been

I mentioned at the beginning that Bird Box had more going for it than an interesting concept. One of the reasons this film has surged in popularity across social media is its utterly original (and meme-able) images of a blindfolded family struggling through a wilderness. Yet cinematographer Salvatore Totino, a frequent collaborator of Ron Howard whose credits include big-budget tentpole films like The Da Vinci Code and Spider-Man: Homecoming, seems to be phoning it in. The blindfolds worn by almost every character in the film, which are usually repurposed household items like dishrags, add a welcome pop of color in the scenes on the river, which are otherwise muted. Their rough-hewn, handmade look is wonderfully evocative of the world in which these characters live, and at times, it almost seems as if Malorie’s very life force is tied to her blue blindfold.

But the camera never seems aware of the power of these characters’ faces when their eyes are covered. In fact, the film’s poster does a better job of capturing this imagery than the film itself ever does. Even the frequent POV shots through Malorie’s not-quite-opaque blindfold, which could have added an element of danger and suspense, seem randomly placed and obligatory. The film never stops to admire the grim, windswept beauty of these characters and the environment they traverse, even managing to make a scene in which two women go into labor laughable in its matter-of-fact mediocrity.

Not all of this is Totino’s fault, of course. A few shots are even made needlessly ugly by wardrobe decisions, a typical example of the film’s lazy approach to its gold mine of potential visuals. In fact, it’s hard to pick anyone to blame. Susanne Bier, the director, won an Academy Award in 2011 for her film In a Better World. The screenwriter has also been previously nominated for an Academy Award, and Totino’s prior work proves he knows what he’s doing. In the end, the film’s failure is its lack of a passionate vision from anyone involved. The production quality and all-star cast might have been enough to lead Bird Box to success on Netflix, but in time, the film’s only real legacy will be to lead frustrated artists everywhere to mutter, “I could have done it better.”