Screen to Screams: Bird Box and A Quiet Place

Sometimes just facing down a vampire or a haunted house just isn’t enough to frighten some people. To beat vampires, you just have to wait till morning. And even the most haunted houses have doors that lead into bright sunshine and restaurants that serve chili-cheese fries. Some people aren’t frightened until they are faced with the prospect of no escape, when everything and everyone on earth has become a potential threat. Whether it’s caused by zombies, Lovecraftian monsters, carnivorous spiders, the end of the world has always been great fodder for horror fiction. In these stories, though, the threat is never just the monster but from those who have realized that society has broken down and the rules governing human behavior and decency have changed. Look at Josh Malerman’s Bird Box and Jon Krasinski’s movie A Quiet Place to see examples of what humans become when everything they once known has collapsed. People, these stories say, either become better or devolve into something worse.

In apocalyptic fiction, there are moments at the beginning of the story where the reader/viewer gets acclimated. They begin to learn the specific rules of this universe where the social order that we here have taken for granted is no more. In A Quiet Place, at least in the beginning, there is not the swelling, menacing soundtrack that is part of many horror films. The characters themselves make very little noise, using American Sign Language to communicate when outside. When Lee, the father, is forced to take away a toy that makes noise, it confirms that sounds, any sounds, are deadly. What dwells within this new reality are creatures that can hear well and move fast, meaning any sound that you make, from a whisper to a scream, could be your last. The family, each and every one of them, must constantly focus on surviving, but there are also moments where the family, especially the daughter shouldering the burden of her own guilty conscience, is able to reflect on what they have lost even as they concentrate on living another day.

Bird Box, Josh Malerman’s debut novel, also features a unique creature that has overtaken the world, but how this creature operates also changes how people view their new surroundings (or rather don’t view them, in the case of Bird Box). The story begins with Mallory and her two children Boy and Girl. There’s an early glimpse into their routine where the children wake in complete darkness. The readers also find out the windows are sealed up. Sight has become potentially deadly because all it takes is a look at the creatures that inhabit Malerman’s universe to become insane, potentially harming yourself and others. Like Place’s lack of soundtrack, Malerman describes the closed-off windows and ritual for things requiring leaving the house in a way that adds to the tension and to the claustrophobia. The reader, thanks to a double narrative involving the family’s exodus from the house and a pregnant Mallory discovering and then losing friends within the house, is also shown the dangers of seeing these creatures and what it does to the mind. Malerman easily transitions between these two narratives, one ultimately leading to loss and the subsequent gaining of fortitude and the other leading to the discovery of something akin to home. That is usually the running theme of many apocalyptic stories: the rediscovery of something lost when everyday becomes a battle to survive until the next.

The recent zombie explosion has produced great stories like the Walking Dead series, but readers can also look for monsters that aren’t of the undead variety, as well as a reminder that humans can be just as fearsome as monsters while perhaps realizing they also have the potential to be angels, regardless of the situation.