Takings its cues from the bleakest works of Samuel Beckett, the claustrophobic horror of Cube, and the leftovers from Man Versus Food, dystopian nightmare The Platform became a surprise international hit in the early days of the pandemic, its central themes of class inequality and selfishness versus altruism proving eerily prophetic of the socially-distanced months ahead.
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s impressive yet incredibly oppressive directorial debut wasn’t exactly crying out for a sequel. But Netflix’s arbitrary viewing figures talk (56 million homes apparently streamed it within four weeks), and so five years after its original Spanish release, we’re being treated to another hyperviolent, hellish feast.
The premise is pretty much the same. The entire 99-minute movie is set within the gloomy, cavernous walls of the Vertical Self-Management Center, a 333-level tower block whose dining facilities boast a superhuman aversion to health and safety. As before, any residents lucky enough to be randomly assigned to its top floors can choose to gorge on a sumptuous banquet fit for a Spartan king. This also means any residents unlucky enough to wake up on the three-figured floors will have to search for scraps on a table that looks and smells like it’s been recovered from a dumpster.
The rules, on the other hand, have slightly changed. Food can still only be consumed within the few minutes the platform stops (as shown by the horrifying scene where one poor woman burns to death; even accidental remnants still lead to fatal temperature changes), and its prisoners are still reshuffled every month. However, thanks to The Master, a highly influential, near-mythical figure said to have offered his own flesh to his hungry disciples, the concepts of fairness, rationing, and general consideration for one’s fellow man have come into play.
Inevitably, this new religion — whose gospel is fervently spread by a chosen few dubbed the Anointed Ones — soon reveals itself to be as strict and malevolent as the machine it’s claiming to subvert. Prisoners must go without if their designated dishes have already been consumed from above, for instance, and any food intended for the deceased must be thrown away. “If the law isn’t respected, people will die,” one convert ominously declares in what proves to be more of an explicit threat than a safety warning.
That’s why the two new “heroes” are constantly seen tucking into the same solitary meal. Played by Milena Smit (last seen in Netflix’s underrated missing girl drama La chica de la nieve), resourceful Perempuan opts for potato croquettes while boxer-turned-stand-up Hovik Keuchkerian’s cantankerous Zamiatin has an obsession with cheese and tomato pizza.
The reluctant roommates make for an interesting pairing as their relationship gradually evolves from inherent wariness to tentative trust, with the catalyst a kindhearted gesture involving some persistent back hair some viewers may find ickier than all the blood and gore. Sadly, for much of The Platform 2, their meals are the closest we get to character insight.
Once again, Gaztelu-Urrutia is as skimpy with information as the Center is with portions. Why would anyone willingly put themselves at the mercy of such a depraved system, for example? And other than to mirror the dog-eat-dog structure of society, what is its purpose? The movie occasionally drip-feeds some semblance of an answer, but logic is in short supply. The filmmaker admitted he left its predecessor open to interpretation, but there’s a sense here that he simply couldn’t cook up any concrete explanations.
On a purely visual horror level, though, The Platform delivers. As you’d expect, there are several moments that rival Dennis Quaid’s shrimp-eating in The Substance for the title of this year’s most revolting food scene. Philosophical conversations (“One day, I concluded that if we accept something that doesn’t match any physical reality of our universe as a solution, I could never trust mathematics again”) are frequently interrupted by flying body parts. Then there’s the wonderfully creepy sequence where gas-masked men gather bodies in a green-bathed, gravity-defying chamber surrounded by floating particles of blood, some much-needed respite from the film’s overwhelmingly gray color palette.
By this point, The Platform 2 has been turned on its head by a revelation which, depending on your tolerance for world-building, will be met with rapturous applause or frustrated groans. Nevertheless, it’s undoubtedly in keeping with a film far more interested in questions than answers, allegories than plot, and heavy-handed messaging than subtext.
It seems unlikely the appetite for such abject nihilism will be as high four years on, when the rise of anti-vaxxing and other self-serving conspiracy theories have dominated the discourse. The Platform 2 doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, and it lacks the shock factor that made the original’s sledgehammer approach easier to digest. Instead of an exciting new twist on an old favorite, it ultimately feels more like reheated seconds.
