If you’ve sat through the unnerving new Netflix thriller Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, you’ll know that it’s pretty much like A Quiet Place but with sight instead of sound.
Which means that actually clocking your eyes on the menacing monster is not something that’s going to happen because you’ll die, or something.
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We very nearly got an glance at the supernatural being that kills on sight, until the show’s production team realised it was too funny to include, and ruined the tension of the whole thing.
As reported by Bloody Disgusting, the film’s scriptwriters originally penned a nightmare scene where Bullock’s character, Malorie, encounters the hideous beast, which she described as “a green man with a horrific baby face.”
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.
Ok yeah, I can see why this scene got cut.
The team actually shot and produced the whole thing before making the executive decision that having a long fat thing with a baby face would entirely ruin the tension of the movie, which horror lord Stephen King described as “riveting“.
Could you imagine getting halfway through a movie feeling deeply uneasy about the whole situation, only to see that the thing that has been terrorising the post-apocalyptic world is some pudgy long worm with a literal infant’s face? It really ruins the mood.
The film’s director Susanne Bier added that Sandra couldn’t stop laughing at it.
It so easily becomes funny. 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, ‘Shit, that’s a different film.’
I have taken the liberty to concoct in my dumb brain what this thing would look like – considering the monster takes form as your deepest, darkest fear – and this is what I came up with. Be warned, this is some really scary shit.
Ok here we go.
