Giving Compass' Take:

• The author argues that the new Netflix movie 'Bird Box' does not address issues of mental illness, but rather further stigmatizes it by its portrayals of suicide and mixed metaphors throughout the movie. 

• How can media portrayal perpetuate harmful stereotypes, especially of mental illness?

• Read about the importance of removing the stigma of mental health among youth. 

. At first blush, Bird Box's flaws seem inoffensive, if plentiful: A poorly written script, half-baked world-building, paper-thin characters, and the waste of the talents of an Oscar-winning actress on five-year-old screen partners.

But under closer scrutiny, a more sinister byproduct emerges from the failures of Netflix's Sandra Bullock-starring post-apocalyptic thriller.

The villainization of people with mental illness in Hollywood is far from new. But Bird Box seems to wear this stigmatization and its sensationalization of suicide like a badge of gritty honor.

Centered around an end-of-day reckoning, Bird Box imagines a world stalked by monsters that drive people to commit suicide at the mere sight of them. Everyone, that is, except those with mental illnesses. Instead of killing themselves in gratuitously gory ways like all the "normal" characters, people with mental illnesses become literal agents of evil, obsessed with carrying out the monsters' mission to destroy humanity.

What is clear is that Bird Box joins a long-standing tradition of mass media perpetuating the myth that people with mental illness are dangerously deranged villains of ultra-violence, rather than the reality that they're actually more likely to be victims of violence.

Then there's Bird Box's rather cavalier attitude toward depicting gleefully violent suicides.

It's obvious that the creators of Bird Box did not set out to create a film villainizing mental illness or sensationalizing suicide. If you squint at its woefully confused metaphors, there might be an allegory in the monsters as a darkness that perhaps only people who've lived with depression, psychological disorders, etc., would be familiar with.

Yet a lack of awareness does not excuse the harm caused by Bird Box's flagrant carelessness in handling extremely sensitive subject matter.

Read the full article about Bird Box by Jess Joho at Mashable