Are you tired of the constant barrage of holiday movies? Are you missing the suspense and thrills of shows like The Walking Dead? If so, you might wonder if Bird Box is how to spend your Friday night.

The Netflix post-apocalyptic thriller has a stacked cast with Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, BD Wong, Lil Rey Howery, and John Malkovich starring in a story about creatures that cause people who look at them to die by suicide in horrific ways. This means that most survivors have to brave the world blindfolded in order to stay alive.

Bird Box immediately raises questions with a stern Mallory (Bullock) instructing two kids called “girl” and “boy” that she will pretty much murder them if they remove their blindfold or talk during their arduous journey toward safety. It’s a strange threat considering that if they look, they are going to die anyway.

The movie quickly flashes back to five years prior to show what led up to this moment. Mallory is pregnant and leaving a routine doctor’s appointment with her sister when things suddenly go awry.

She ends up in a house with a random selection of people, including another pregnant woman, as they start to recount their stories of how others around them began to die. It doesn’t take long for them to piece together the basics of what is going on and the basics are just about all you will get from this movie.

No one knows how long this has been going on, why it is happening, and the creature itself is only revealed via a few ominous sketches. Everything doesn’t have to be spelled out for it to be a solid movie or TV show. It’s been years since the apocalypse in The Walking Dead and no one knows how it all got started, but at least we see the walkers and understand how they operate. But, Bird Box left me feeling like I wanted more from this story.

Most of Bird Box takes place inside of one house, which belongs to the resident jerk Douglas (Malkovich) as the group struggles to survive with limited resources. It bounces back and forth with Mallory’s great river adventure with the kids to parts unknown but the jumps are well-spaced and actually make sense.

A ton of questions remain unanswered throughout the movie as people essentially die one by one in various ways. There’s a lot of intense moments that end up falling flat and excellent character interactions despite none of them really getting any solid character development outside of Mallory and Tom (Rhodes).

Mallory’s emotional detachment and survival only mentality vs. other’s viewpoints is one of the most compelling elements of this movie that comes back to haunt her near the end. She’s making her decisions to ensure the kids safety, but she’s killing their spirit and trust in the process.

As for the other characters, the audience learns bits and pieces along the way, but not enough for you to really root for most of their survival, which is a good thing because most of them die anyway. There’s one heroic death that crushes you near the end because it’s the one person that you really hoped would make it to the promised land.

Bird Box is a bunch of intriguing working parts that never seem to quite flow together, especially with one problematic twist about the creature’s different effects on people. Character motivations and decisions are nonsensical at times like taking a pregnant woman on a supply run and other times things ring absolutely true like drinking alcohol straight up out the bottle in the middle of this chaos.

The main things you want to happen never seem to come to fruition. Some people are okay without the big reveals and interested in the psychological aspects of a movie, but even that seems a bit disjointed here. The main thing that saves this movie is the excellent performances by this wildly talented cast.

The ending is certainly an interesting but not totally unexpected twist that gives some satisfaction to an otherwise depressing story. A lot of suspension of belief has to take place to enjoy this movie but if you enjoy a ton of leaves rustling, dark shadows, and people running with blindfolds then this is the flick for you.