A writer has no better friend than the supernatural as a plot device. No matter how completely he paints himself, and his reader, into a corner, the supernatural provides the magic escape route. Presto! Problem solved. This is horror novelist Stephen King's stock in trade, and he uses the device, after all these years, with practiced skill in his recent novel, The Outsider.
Here, King sets up an intriguing, baffling scenario wherein a vicious murder has occurred and an abundance of hard evidence points quite unquestionably to a particular man as the perpetrator of the crime. Nonetheless, it can also quite unquestionably be shown that this man could not have been the killer, because he was many miles away when the crime occurred. How can it be? One cannot be in two places at once.
Enter the transition to the supernatural. There is an answer after all--and the challenge is now a matter of comprehending the supernatural and dealing with it on its own terms, which, of course, are quite foreign to everything we thought we knew about the world.
In some way, King's efforts to explain the nature of a supernatural intrusion into common reality have become unnecessary in contemporary narrative. Weird things "just happen". We are used to this by now, having been previously overrun by zombies and vampires (of both the friendly and deadly sort), devils and demons and the megalodon emerging from a prehistoric sea. There are strange forces in the air, threatening mists and winds and whispers. That's just the way it is. Disaster happens overnight, thrusting us into a horrifying new reality. (It's not really so hard to imagine. After all, we've seen it happen in an American election).
And so it happens in Bird Box, the popular new film from Netflix, that the world as we know it ends overnight, essentially just because. Something is causing the entire population of the world to go crazy, the mere sight of some entity in the air (which we, the viewers, never see) driving people either to kill others or to kill themselves. What is it? Well, who cares? It just is what it is. The issue now is how, under the prevailing circumstances, do we get out alive?
Bird Box has met with an unusual amount of contention among viewers, with some liking the film very much and some hating it, some intrigued and engaged, some bored and dismissive. For myself, the film struck me as being quite a considerable cut above the usual horror/apocalyptic fare. There is plenty to think about in the themes provided, plenty to ponder and analyze. And for me, this is what makes for a good supernatural narrative, in as far as the story may be taken as symbolic and allegorical, pertaining, after all, to our common reality.
The one thing I cannot explain, however, is why all of these Bird Box memes have appeared on the internet. Lol. Most have nothing whatsoever to do with the film. Talk about supernatural!
Here, King sets up an intriguing, baffling scenario wherein a vicious murder has occurred and an abundance of hard evidence points quite unquestionably to a particular man as the perpetrator of the crime. Nonetheless, it can also quite unquestionably be shown that this man could not have been the killer, because he was many miles away when the crime occurred. How can it be? One cannot be in two places at once.
Enter the transition to the supernatural. There is an answer after all--and the challenge is now a matter of comprehending the supernatural and dealing with it on its own terms, which, of course, are quite foreign to everything we thought we knew about the world.
In some way, King's efforts to explain the nature of a supernatural intrusion into common reality have become unnecessary in contemporary narrative. Weird things "just happen". We are used to this by now, having been previously overrun by zombies and vampires (of both the friendly and deadly sort), devils and demons and the megalodon emerging from a prehistoric sea. There are strange forces in the air, threatening mists and winds and whispers. That's just the way it is. Disaster happens overnight, thrusting us into a horrifying new reality. (It's not really so hard to imagine. After all, we've seen it happen in an American election).
And so it happens in Bird Box, the popular new film from Netflix, that the world as we know it ends overnight, essentially just because. Something is causing the entire population of the world to go crazy, the mere sight of some entity in the air (which we, the viewers, never see) driving people either to kill others or to kill themselves. What is it? Well, who cares? It just is what it is. The issue now is how, under the prevailing circumstances, do we get out alive?
Bird Box has met with an unusual amount of contention among viewers, with some liking the film very much and some hating it, some intrigued and engaged, some bored and dismissive. For myself, the film struck me as being quite a considerable cut above the usual horror/apocalyptic fare. There is plenty to think about in the themes provided, plenty to ponder and analyze. And for me, this is what makes for a good supernatural narrative, in as far as the story may be taken as symbolic and allegorical, pertaining, after all, to our common reality.
The one thing I cannot explain, however, is why all of these Bird Box memes have appeared on the internet. Lol. Most have nothing whatsoever to do with the film. Talk about supernatural!
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