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26th December 2018
02:41pm GMT
The movie dropped on Netflix this week and is already massively popular, with people taking to social media in their droves to share their terror.
The movie, starring Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson, tells the story of Malorie - a pregnant woman fighting for survival when a mysterious "creature" causes people who look at it to commit suicide.
There are many theories as to what the "creature" is - but one theory published on Nerdist is actually based in fact.
The publication muses that the movie could actually be about "psychosomatic hysteria" - whereby an inner stress or mental conflict presents itself in physical symptoms.
"Mass hysteria", now known as mass psychogenic illness (MPI), occurs when a cohesive group all suffer the same symptoms or reactions, and there are various real life occurrences that have been reported.
In 1962 there was a "laughter epidemic" in Tanganyika, whereby uncontrollable laughter affected almost 1,000 people and lasted several months. It even resulted in the temporary closure of 14 schools. Laughter and mania are said to be reactions to chronic stress among a population.
Most cases of mass psychogenic illness begin with a single individual which sets in motion a chain effect. In this case, it began in one school and then spread into other at-risk populations.
More recently in Lancashire, 40 students at the Outwood academy in Ripon had treatment for dizziness and nausea after four fainted in an Armistice Day service.
David Winspear of the North Yorkshire fire service suspects that a handful of children fainted, with the rest developing symptoms driven by anxiety that rippled through the school in a domino effect.
Doctors have recorded cases for hundreds of years and incidents happen around the world regularly.
Simon Wessely at the institute of psychiatry, King’s College London, said: “This is incredibly common and happens to completely normal people.
“It may be that someone faints, or has a fit, or a medical incident, and what then gets transmitted is anxiety. People get anxious because they don’t quite know what it is, and the thing about anxiety is that it gives you symptoms. You feel frightened, you shake, you get a dry mouth, you get butterflies in your stomach, you might get chest pain. The next thing you know, you’ve keeled over.”
People are more likely to suffer from MPI if the first person to be affected is someone they know well, with schools being particularly vulnerable.
Could it be that the "creature" in Bird Box is actually a figment of the entire world's imagination and that the results are a case of MPI on a colossal scale?
Lindsay Romain writes on Nerdist: 'Perhaps current events or the threat of climate change disrupted psyches so much that humanity started turning on itself, leading to an outbreak of sorts.'
It's just one theory - but it certainly fits!
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