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Unseen Bird Box creatures look kinda like bald, veiny babies

Maybe it's a good thing viewers didn't see the Netflix creatures that drove people insane.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Warning: Spoilers for Bird Box ahead.

The monster you never get to see is always the scariest, and Netflix's post-apocalyptic hit Bird Box is no exception. Viewers never see the creatures that drive humans to violent deaths merely by being glimpsed, except in some dark and disturbing sketches by Gary (Tom Hollander).

But in a now-deleted Instagram post, Howard Berger, Emmy-winning co-owner of special-effects company KNB EFX Group, shared a few images of one concept for the creature. Berger and Netflix didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to multiple screengrabs of the images, including the one below posted by SFX Atlas, Berger shared three views of the creature. 

"It's always a bit disappointing when so much effort goes into something that ends up in the cutting room floor, but I get it and it's always what is best for the final product," the original post said, according to SFX Atlas .

While it probably would've been scarier in context, to this Bird Box watcher, the images appear to be of a bald, veiny adult baby with crushed ears.

"Seems almost comical in concept," wrote Instagram user jsfx79. "Not what I envisioned."

But some found them to be unnerving. "Yeah I think the not knowing is scarier, but these are still wigging me out," wrote ronnieeaves.

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer told Bloody Disgusting he was "forced" to write a nightmare scene where Sandra Bullock's Malorie sees one of the creatures, which is presumably what the special-effects images were for.

Bullock wasn't exactly terrified.

"I turn and he's like this [growling at me,]" she said in the Bloody Disgusting interview. "It's making me laugh. It was just a long fat baby."

In Josh Malerman's 2014 novel of the same name, the creatures are never described.

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