Available from July 14 Netflix, Bird box BarcelonaFrom David AND Alex Shepherdis a by-product of the American bird box, a 2018 film starring Sandra Bullock that became one of the most successful on the platform. Significant change of place for a story that touches the universe and the mythology of the progenitor (a mixture between And the day has come, Quiet place and “Blindness” by Saramago), but deprived him of the spirit of the thriller. It turns out a completely ordinary post-apocalyptic film, which, in addition to interesting reflections on faith, fanaticism and religion, does not add anything new to the original film.
Plot
After the world has been plunged into darkness, overrun with mysterious creatures that drive anyone who looks at them to suicide, man (Mario Casas) wanders with his daughter through the streets of deserted Barcelona, attentive to the slightest sound or noise. After all, the world in which these two are trying to survive has become a world of blind people, divided between those who do not want to look, and those few (mentally unbalanced) who instead saw and who now, in the throes of mystical delirium, instead of killing themselves in horror, they would like to make others see.
Post-apocalyptic worlds and expanded universes
Every self-respecting post-apocalyptic film or series carries the germ of entire narrative universes, possible worlds, which from time to time are filled with different stories and characters. Fertile lands (so to speak) for the most diverse situations, new realities that can be expanded indefinitely with a few simple rules. We accept bird box, For example. The 2018 film with Sandra Bullock, on the wave of dystopias so popular at the time (Quiet place, If this, the walking Dead), once again resumed the crumbling world, but introduced a significant variable: instead of epidemics, zombies and monsters hypersensitive to sound, our heroes would have to deal with mysterious and literally “invisible” entities.
Thought-provoking topic
A powerful idea, even Lovecraftian (an unspeakable horror that, if seen and known, leads to madness and death), materialized, however, against his will, in a decidedly conventional thriller, saved only thanks to show of force the action of its protagonist interpreter and undeniably suggestive subject. However, for Netflix, this is enough to make it the prototype of a new expanded universe. That’s how it was born Bird box Barcelona. Not a sequel, but a spin-off set in the same narrative universe as Beer’s work. A film that decides to explore its new world and its new possibilities, paradoxically neglecting the very mechanisms of horror and thriller.
Far from pure genre
In fact, apart from the setting, there is very little gender in the Pastor Brothers film. It was as if the authors, fascinated by this new world and the narrative and thematic possibilities that this could offer them, decided it was best to concentrate on the essence of these strange visions, building them around a story of faith, madness and redemption. a broken father and made unstable by the course of events. That’s how this spin-off soon sheds its genre soul, cultivating the allure of creatures and their followers. Horror without horror, despite more than one concession spray (and the presence of Georgina Campbell from Barbarian), which sacrifices its specificity, getting lost in the known dynamics.
Beyond the initial turn that reverses incipit alla Road and to Last of usin fact in the safe rails of the film b he settles Bird box Barcelona. A story that adds nothing to the franchise’s mythology (what is it and where do these creatures come from?), but which nonetheless reveals more than it needs to, losing in the process exactly the essence that made the fortune undoubtedly more compelling and unsettling film. , For example bird box.