Halloween Horror: The Platform 2 (2024)

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Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform (2019) was a surprisingly effective science-fiction horror film and allegory about class warfare that used its restricted setting to its advantage. Sadly, Gaztelu-Urrutia’s sequel, The Platform 2, recently released on Netflix, loses the elegance and narrow focus of the original film. In place of its simple allegory and genre thrills is a convoluted mix of religious allegory and plot twists. The Platform thrived on simplicity. The Platform 2 refuses simplicity at every turn.

Nevertheless, like its predecessor, the film is set in the Pit, a vertical prison where prisoners are placed two per level and have to sustain themselves from the food that descends each day on a massive platform that passes through the centre of the cells, one level after the other. There’s enough food on the platform for every prisoner, but the catch is that it’s only enough if everyone only takes the dish they requested before entering the prison. Those on the lower levels can only survive if those above them take their fair share.

In The Platform 2, we meet prisoners Perempuan (Melina Smit), a woman wracked by guilt for the death of a child, and Zamiatin (Hovik Keuchkerian), a hulking brute who claims to be a mathematics genius. On their first day in the prison, the prisoners on the level above them inform them of the Law, a set of rules that dictate that each person eats only the food on the platform they requested. The people above and below each level are responsible for ensuring that they follow the Law. Those that follow the Law are called Loyalists. Those that do not are called Barbarians. When a Barbarian is discovered, Loyalists will ride the platform down to kill the Barbarians and send word down the cells so those below know what’s happening. It’s a brutal, dogmatic system, but seemingly the only way to stay alive and ensure as many people get fed as possible.

But the more that Perempuan learns about the Law and the Anointed Ones, so called because they were the first disciples of the Master who instituted the Law, the more she wonders whether it’s just another system of inequality and control. Thus, The Platform 2 becomes an allegory about religion, turning its focus from class warfare to religious purity tests and dogmatic approaches to moral systems.

I give credit to Gaztelu-Urrutia and co-writers David Desola, Pedro Rivero, and Egoitz Moreno for expanding the interests of the series into a new territory instead of simply reiterating the thematic message of the original film, but in the process, they muddy the waters and make it hard to parse what exactly the film is saying. The Platform was elegant for the clarity of its message. The Platform 2 is more convoluted and confusing, not only thematically but also narratively.

As the film progresses, Perempuan learns more about the Law and descends levels until she meets an Anointed One for herself. She learns there is more to the Law than she first assumed and our own assumptions as viewers start to turn upside down. Soon, the film revels in its twists and turns. The first film moved at a furious pace that sustained viewer interest despite the limited and repetitive setting (each level is identical, so there’s really only one set in the film). The second moves at a furious pace as well, but loses a coherent structure in the process. As soon as we learn about Perempuan and Zamiatin, they’re thrust into the machinations of the Law and descending levels to attack Barbarians. Tragedy strikes and the film resets. The film seems to open in media res, lacking the original’s patient opening which built the characters and let us understand their motivations. As the film progresses, every time the viewer gets on surefooting, the narrative pulls the rug out from under them. When a movie is working with allegory, such narrative machinations do it no favours. Complex allegories need to be comprehensible at every juncture. The Platform 2 becomes incomprehensible the more it progresses.

And that’s to say nothing of the film’s grotesquerie. There’s a certain thrill to watching people descend into madness. In a horror work, the threat of dismemberment and cannibalism is especially thrilling, as it was in the first film, when the tension gradually builds towards it, increasing our anxiety. But The Platform 2 is grotesque from the start and amplifies from there. The endless shots of people eating the food in disgusting manners grows tiring. By the end, all the blood and guts has lost the ability to thrill us, rather dulling us into apathy. There’s still a good idea here and perhaps a third film could square the platform, but narratively, viscerally, allegorically, The Platform 2 grows more than a little too much.

5 out of 10

The Platform 2 (2024, Spain)

Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia; written by David Desola, Pedro Rivero, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, and Egoitz Moreno; starring Milena Smit, Hovik Keuchkerian, Natalia Tena, Óscar Jaenada, Antonia San Juan.

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