Directed by Álex and David Pastor — Screenplay by Álex and David Pastor.
In the late 2010s, sensory-based apocalyptic horror-thrillers were all the rage. John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place (2018) was a box office success, spawned a sequel, and was Oscar-nominated. Susanne Bier’s Bird Box (2018) was met with mixed reviews but was still a massive hit for Netflix yet it also inspired a hazardous and controversial social media blindfold challenge. Then there was something like John R. Leonetti’s The Silence (2019), which was another Netflix release, but Leonetti’s film was quite rough in most ways. Well, now Netflix has decided to cash in on the brand recognition of Bird Box by releasing its first sequel titled Bird Box Barcelona, a mostly Spanish-languaged spin-off that I don’t think has all that much new to say, unfortunately.
Written and directed by filmmaking brothers Álex and David Pastor, Bird Box Barcelona, like Bird Box, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where survivors must blindfold themselves when outside to not be affected by an entity, which, like in the first film, we never see. This entity can get inside the heads of people whose eyes aren’t closed and mimic anyone’s voice. Once fully affected by the entity — when they see ‘it’ — they cannot stop themselves from committing suicide. In this Spanish spin-off, we follow Sebastian (played by Mario Casas), a vulnerable and desperate survivor, who constantly sees an apparition of his daughter that wants him to carry out a task. You see, Sebastian wants people to see. In an early scene, we see how he is ready to put communities in harm and sacrifice them because he can actually see without being harmed and he believes that seeing — and dying because of it — is a good thing and that the entity is some kind of divine being.
This aspect of the story is not entirely new for these films. In the Susanne Bier Bird Box film, there are also ‘seers’ that are capable of seeing outside without being harmed, and they insist that everyone else must open their eyes. But whereas that first film primarily painted them as unstable individuals from a psychiatric hospital (and criminals), this film is more interested in how religious individuals can become false prophets and lead cattle to slaughter like a Judas goat. It is an interesting idea, but I don’t think the film does much more than scratch the surface of a theme with a lot of potential. The same can be said for its handling of grief and sorrow.
One of the frustrating things about that first film was that you never actually saw the mysterious being that few can survive seeing, and while this film frustratingly does that very same thing, it does try to explain the phenomenon in ways that aren’t really all that involving or interesting. There is a setup for a sequel near the end, but I don’t know that it really lands all that well. It is a tease in a series of films that constantly teases you without actually ever deciding on a creature design to show us. Really, the major problem with this film is how it doesn’t really have all that many tricks up its sleeves, rather much of this feels like a generic retread devoid of the kind of horror and suspense that films like these rely on.
Though not nearly as well-known as the stacked cast in Susanne Bier’s film, this sequel does have a strong cast on its hands (though nothing here comes close to the strong performance that Bier got out of Bullock in that first film). Mario Casas gets an interesting character to work with, but the arc is obvious from the get-go. It also doesn’t do enough with the cast it has on its hands. Rising star Diego Calva of Babylon fame is in this film in a supporting role, and he barely gets anything to do. He is severely underused. Georgina Campbell, who was in last year’s great horror surprise Barbarian, is also in this in a more sizable part than Calva’s, but she also doesn’t have all that much to work with. These are mostly cardboard-thin characters and the same can be said for Leonardo Sbaraglia’s antagonist.
Álex and David Pastor’s Bird Box Barcelona is a competently made film, the visual effects and sound design are definitely adequate and relatively strong, there are some neat locations, and the main character’s shocking action in the first half is a fascinating way to open this spin-off. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t do enough with its most interesting ideas, the supporting characters are too thinly drawn, it never becomes particularly suspenseful or scary, and the film is too generic and trite to leave a lasting impact. As such, it is a relatively unremarkable sequel that doesn’t do enough to justify its own existence beyond trying to turn this into a franchise.
5 out of 10
– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 