‘Bird Box Barcelona’ Review: Spanish Spinoff of Netflix’s Horror Hit Pads Out a Thin Concept With Meager Gains (2024)

Susanne Bier’s 2018 apocalyptic sci-fi chiller for Netflix, Bird Box, was a half-cooked stew of familiar ideas lifted above its derivative conception by a commanding Sandra Bullock, channeling grim determination as she braved a mysterious alien menace to shepherd two children to safety. Trauma, grief and parenting under extreme duress again factor into Spanish siblings Alex and David Pastor’s follow-up, Bird Box Barcelona, which is more spinoff than sequel. It starts from scratch, anthology-style, slapping on new details that expand on the original threat without offering much illumination.

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The movie is technically accomplished, well-acted, atmospherically unsettling and certainly watchable. As an extension of a popular property that increases Netflix’s push into international production, it serves a dual purpose. But as genre material, it’s generic, as if the filmmakers had randomly mashed together elements of A Quiet Place, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead and other dystopian nightmares about humanity pushed to the brink of extinction by a deadly force of unknown origin, creating a world where the shrinking number of survivors no longer knows who can be trusted.

Bird Box Barcelona

The Bottom LineEngrossing enough, but unmemorable.

Release date: Friday, June 14
Cast: Mario Casas, Georgina Campbell, Diego Calva, Naila Schuberth, Alejandra Howard, Patrick Criado, Celia Freijeiro, Lola Dueñas, Gonzalo de Castro, Michelle Jenner, Leonardo Sbaraglia
Director-screenwriters: Alex Pastor, David Pastor, based on the novel Bird Box, by Josh Malerman
1 hour 50 minutes

Departing from Josh Malerman’s 2014 source novel and from the central character of Bullock’s Malorie, the Pastors want to have it both ways by explaining how the phenomenon works — anyone who sees the creatures is prompted to take their own life in the swiftest way possible — while retaining the ambiguity. Their script does both too much and not enough to justify a deeper dive into a story that already suffered from contrivances and wobbly logic the first time around.

Shifting the setting to a Catholic country allows for a mildly intriguing religious twist. A wild-eyed priest, Father Esteban (Leonardo Sbaraglia), welcomes the lethal entity as a Divine miracle, delivering lost souls from the hell of life on earth. With a small band of fellow “seers,” who have witnessed the phenomenon but are resistant to its curse, the priest roams the streets daubing the foreheads of survivors with a third eye and forcing them to accept their fate.

A significant new development in the spinoff is a flash of light emanating from bodies immediately after their death, suggesting a spiritual release that adds credence to Father Esteban’s belief that “Our God and his angels have come down to walk the earth.” One dying man speaks as if in a rapture: “Their ships have traveled millions of light years to get here.”

But the more rational characters are no closer to identifying what exactly is causing the mass suicides. Some see demons and others see aliens, some see their torturer and some their God. A character played by an underused Diego Calva (Babylon) speculates that they are some kind of quantum beings that take on fluctuating forms, observing their prey and instantly absorbing their fears, anxieties and sorrows to manipulate their minds.

We experience the arrival of the creatures via juddering noise, groans, growls and an eerie gust of wind lifting leaves and debris off the ground, and occasionally we see what they see. But the audience still doesn’t get a good look at them, only the briefest partial glimpse in a final scene.

While some of the suicides are startling in their sudden violence, it’s all a bit too vague to carry much of a kick as horror and too inevitable in its mounting fatalities to pack much suspense. The film doesn’t do enough to pull its audience in, with thin characters whose back-stories mostly are suggested by whispered voices from their past, carried on the wind with the appearance of the amorphous menace.

The Pastor brothers have traveled adjacent territory with previous features Carriers, about a deadly viral threat, and The Last Days, another vision of life after a cataclysm. They mirror the fussy flashback structure of Bier’s film in their construction, setting up the central character, Sebastián (Mario Casas), as a desperate man, wandering the streets in dark goggles and hiding out in the abandoned buildings of Barcelona as he tries to keep his 11-year-old daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard) from harm.

But after establishing Sebastián as a vulnerable hero when he’s assaulted by a trio of blind robbers, the script swiftly shifts our perceptions, making us question his motives as he gains the trust of one survivor community after another. “Am I the shepherd or the wolf?” he asks himself in a moment of crisis when his actions cause him to lose faith, pointing up a duality that gives Casas something relatively meaty to play. We also become aware quite early that Anna is not exactly what she seems.

Jumping back first to nine months earlier, the film recaps the start of the outbreak. Newscasts report a wave of psychotic behavior as Sebastián dashes from his office across the city in chaos to retrieve Anna from school, narrowly avoiding being drawn into a mass suicide on a metro platform.

The action then shifts again to seven months before the opening scenes, after Sebastián has been accepted as part of a community hiding out in a bomb shelter. That group includes leader Rafa (Patrick Criado); English psychologist Claire (Georgina Campbell, who had more to work with in Barbarian); preteen German tourist Sofia (Naila Schuberth), separated from her mother in the confusion; older couple Roberto (Gonzalo de Castro) and Isabel (Lola Dueñas); and Calva’s Octavio.

The plot driver, which ideally should have kicked in earlier, involves that band of blindfolded survivors attempting to get to a refuge across town, Montjuïc Castle, the 17th-century mountaintop fortress accessible from the city by cable cars. Naturally, the group’s numbers dwindle along the way, leaving a reduced contingent of core characters to face a dual threat — from the other-wordly death force and from the human crusaders determined to open their eyes to “the miracle.”

The fortress setting is a striking location for a climactic struggle that points the way to further sequels. Laia Colet’s production design in general is effective — even when the brushstrokes of the CG team are visible, seeing a wrecked cruise liner half-sunk in the port or bridges festooned with dangling corpses gives a vivid sense of a world without mercy or hope. The film’s most impressive nerve-jangling element, however, is its dense sound design, deftly blended with Zeltia Montes’ ominous score. Too bad there’s little in the story that gets under the skin with comparable skill.

‘Bird Box Barcelona’ Review: Spanish Spinoff of Netflix’s Horror Hit Pads Out a Thin Concept With Meager Gains (2024)

FAQs

‘Bird Box Barcelona’ Review: Spanish Spinoff of Netflix’s Horror Hit Pads Out a Thin Concept With Meager Gains? ›

Hollywood Reporter: “While some of the suicides are startling in their sudden violence, it's all a bit too vague to carry much of a kick as horror and too inevitable in its mounting fatalities to pack much suspense… [The] Spanish spinoff of Netflix's horror hit pads out a thin concept with meagre gains.”

What was the point of Bird Box Barcelona? ›

Bird Box Barcelona explores the post-apocalyptic world where strange phenomena cause mass suicides, leaving small groups of people living in fear and wearing blindfolds to protect themselves.

Is Bird Box Barcelona bad? ›

Bird Box Barcelona has some interesting ideas for new directions the franchise could follow, but overall, this sequel lacks a lot of what made the first movie worth watching.

Is Bird Box Barcelona religious? ›

Film totally in line with Wokeist stereotypes (single mothers, racial quotas, LGBT friendly etc.). The two director-screenwriters of the Catalan version - Álex Pastor and David Pastor - rewrote the story by setting it in Barcelona. And above all by giving it a subtly Catholic slant, in the deepest sense of the word.

Which is better, Bird Box or Bird Box Barcelona? ›

It is also revealed that seers have a unique chemical marker in their DNA that can be key scientists need to reclaim the world from these monsters. Such kind of complex layers are absent in the Bird Box, and that is the reason why Bird Box Barcelona is definitely better than its predecessor.

What is Bird Box about summary? ›

Why is Sebastian immune in Bird Box Barcelona? ›

This happened to Sebastián and his "extreme form" of stress was the grief at the loss of his daughter. The military has hypothesised that if all seers share the same "epigenetic alteration", then this discovery could lead to a way to create immunity to the creatures' effects.

Is Bird Box Barcelona gory? ›

I gave this movie a 15+ rating for: strong gory violence, suicide and frequent strong language.

Is there anything inappropriate in Bird Box? ›

As noted there is gore, language and one 2 second sex scene around the 35:00 mark. 6 people found this helpful.

Is Bird Box 2 coming out? ›

When is Bird Box 2 coming out? There is no Bird Box 2 coming to Netflix. The new Bird Box movie is a spin-off, not a sequel, to the 2018 Bird Box movie. That said, if you're interested in the spin-off film, Bird Box Barcelona will begin streaming on Netflix on Friday, July 14, 2023.

Why does Sebastian crash the bus? ›

The next morning, with everyone asleep inside a bus, Sebastián locks himself in the driver's seat and is caught telling himself that everyone of the people sleeping in the bus would be free. Subsequently, Sebastián starts to drive it around the station until he makes it outside and crashes it.

Can Christians watch Bird Box? ›

And honestly, it may seem a little more “evil” than what some Christians are comfortable with, and that's okay. However, there is some depth to this movie that Christians (and frankly, all people) should observe.

What is the message of Bird Box Barcelona? ›

In comparison to the original story, Bird Box: Barcelona falls short. The only lesson learned by the main character here is that he isn't “chosen,” he's just “broken.” A grieving father manipulated into believing that he can be reunited with his daughter if he helps “free” the souls of others.

Will Bird Box Barcelona be in English? ›

Is Bird Box Barcelona in English or Spanish? Bird Box Barcelona has English and Spanish-speaking characters. For English-speaking viewers, the Spanish language has translated subtitles. Though it is set in Barcelona, not all of the cast are Spanish.

What's the plot of Bird Box Barcelona? ›

What was the whole point of Bird Box? ›

Bird Box sensitively tackles the question of mental health in society. It delves into how it is perceived from those directly affected, to those who view it and how those attitudes are communicated. The movie suggests a split in society, an 'us and them' situation.

Why did the guy take the bus in Bird Box Barcelona? ›

Sebastian thus believes he is an angel, tasked with forcing others to open their eyes to the creature. For instance, he befriends a group of people who live on a bus, and while they are sleeping, he drives the bus out into the open and crashes it. A lot of injured people on the bus open their eyes and die.

What is the entity in Bird Box Barcelona? ›

In the sequel, Octavio explains the creatures are quantum beings using the observer's effect on humanity. Because of this causes humans to perceive them differently; some see their fear, grief, and pain, while others see demons, angels, aliens, and even their deities.

What's the point of the birds in Bird Box? ›

In the Bird Box novel, the appearance of the Bird Box creatures is referred to as "The Problem" and as survivors begin to discover ways to avoid them, they stumble upon the use of birds. Tom hangs Malorie's birds outside the house to act as lookouts and natural alarms, since they can sense The Problem's presence.

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