If you thought The Last Of Us was going to get the last word on end-of-days, humanity-destroying phenomenons, Bird Box has returned to say: “hold my cerveza.”
The first film, which premiered in those innocent, pre-pandemic days of 2018, featured Sandra Bullock helping a couple of kids to safety after an entity caused mass-suicide when people looked at it, and the spin-off sequel, Bird Box Barcelona, follows a similar storyline. At least, it appears so at the beginning. If you’ve not watched the film, then bookmark this page and come back to it later, as we’re about to deep dive into the ending, and there’s obviously many spoilers to follow…
The premise
We join Sebastián (Mario Casas) and his daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard) in the Spanish city as we watch them fighting for their lives, as the mysterious being has taken down much of the European population. The only way to escape its clutches is to wear a blindfold and resist the urge to stare at it. Easy right? No, not really, as this particular villain – we never see what it truly is – has now morphed into a different entity for each person, taking the form and voice of someone who they have loved and lost, tempting them to look at it.
But about 20 minutes into the film, we see Sebastián infiltrate a group of people who have escaped death, and he basically kills them all in either a coach crash, or by forcing them to look at the creature. Plot twist: he’s the bad guy!
Who’s Anna?
A little later in the film, we realise that Anna, his daughter, isn’t really there. She’s a vision, or the creature taking her form to tempt Sebastián into killing others.
There’s a flash back to nine months earlier, where Laura, Anna’s mum, is killed not by the otherworldly beings, but is mowed down by a taxi in a stampede of people trying to leave the city, which is highly unfortunate.
We learn more of the backstory. They survived on their own for a few months until a priest, Padre Esteban (Leonardo Sbaraglia) captured them, and told them he believes it’s God speaking to him. He confesses he wasn’t sure about his vocation until He spoke to him, again highlighting how the beings exploit people’s worst fears and terrors. He forces them to see the “light” and Anna dies by jumping off a roof, but Sebastián, now a Seer, views the creatures as “angels”. The priest tells him that hell save the souls of anyone he converts in this way, and that he will be reunited with Anna and his wife.
But after going on his murdering mission, Sebastián starts to doubt himself and his actions. He begins to change following a meeting with another group of people, including Claire (Georgina Campbell) and the little German girl Sofia (Naila Schuberth) – but not until he’s bumped off several members of their party first, mind.
He gives a necklace that belonged to Anna to Sofia, and his vision of Anna starts to glitch and mutate, as she yells at him, “She’s not your daughter!”. When Claire works out that he’s working for the creatures she tries to escape with Sofia try to escape. When he catches them, he stops when removing Claire’s mask. “What if I'm not the shepherd?,” he asks. “What if I'm the wolf?”.
Before his death, another character, Octavio, explains his theory about what’s happened: “If somehow these creatures are some kind of quantum beings, maybe they don't even have a permanent state. Maybe they're changing, fluctuating all the time, until we hear them or we see them and then they take form based on us. Our fears, our grief, our pain.”
Sofia has been told by her mum – missing, presumed dead – that she should head to a castle on top of a mountain where there will be a refuge and people to take care of her. That could be anywhere, some of the other characters say, but for anyone who’s ever visited Barcelona: it can only mean the picturesque castle of Montjuïc.
Sebastián says he will take Claire and Sofia to the safe space of Montjuic, but on the way he has a face-off Padre Esteban, who takes on the glitched form of Anna, and eventually both men are killed, skewered by a metal pole. Before he dies, Seb has the realisation that, “Grief can break you. I thought I was chosen, but I was just broken”.
Claire and Sofia, meanwhile, have made it up to the cable cars that will take them over the city to the castle, and there’s some tricky manoeuvres attempted in trying to jump onto the car blindedfolded, but eventually they make it. And guess who’s there, under the care of the military? Sofia’s mum: great news all around.
A vaccine?
While in the camp, Claire has her blood taken, as one of the doctors explains their new theory: that the Seers have a biological difference that scrambles their DNA; it's not just a mental change. When they see the creatures, it exploits their extreme stress.
The medics are now trying to make a vaccine using the blood of Seers, and the last scene jumps to an animal testing lab. A Seer is padlocked to a bed, and a vaccine from his blood is injected into rats. The rats are then exposed to the beings, and from the heart-rate monitor, we see that they have died. And that’s where the action cuts out. Did the vaccine work? Right now, we don’t know. But no doubt we’ll find out in Bird Box 3.
Bird Box Barcelona is streaming on Netflix now.
Laura Martin
Culture Writer
Laura Martin is a freelance journalist specializing in pop culture.
