Netflix’s Best Thriller Is Back! A Fresh, Fun New Angle on the Same Story — Movie Pick: Bird Box: Barcelona
Intro
Meow meow, hello everyone! Take a guess what day it is today? That’s right, it’s our Friday movie night again! Today I want to recommend “Bird Box: Barcelona,” the sequel to “Bird Box,” the thriller that everyone hailed as a masterpiece five years ago. I still remember falling in love with it the moment I finished watching it back in high school. You could say this movie was my gateway into thriller films, so the second a sequel came out I clicked on it right away. So let’s get started!
Since the prequel and this follow-up share the same world, I’ll end up spoiling both films at once, so read on at your own discretion!
Story Synopsis
… … … (spoilers ahead) … … …
This all takes place in a modern city, where on an otherwise perfectly ordinary day something extraordinary suddenly happens: people start seeing “that thing” appear, and not only that, once they witness “that thing” they begin to commit mass suicide. Even worse, this strange phenomenon has no cure! As for what exactly “that thing” is? Nobody knows. Some say it’s a demon, some say it’s a monster, and some say it’s an alien. All anyone knows is that the moment any living creature sees them, even just through a computer screen, they are seized by an uncontrollable urge to end their own life.
And yet there’s a certain group of people who are immune to “that thing.” The survivors of this world call them “the seers,” and the seers can be considered an even more terrifying incarnation than “that thing” itself. They roam the streets hunting for survivors, and they force survivors to open their eyes, refusing to let go until they’ve seen “that thing.” Because they can move freely and keep on surviving through this apocalypse, running into a seer is pretty much a dead end for any survivor.
And the story begins with one of these seers. Sebastián and his daughter Anna spot a group of survivors scavenging for food on the street, and Sebastián decides to secretly disguise himself as a survivor, planning to lead them to ascend once they’ve beheld those “angelic faces”…
… … … (end of mild spoilers) … … …
My Thoughts
I think the biggest difference between this film and its prequel is one little change: this time the crew chose to lay their cards on the table right from the start. From the very beginning they tell you who the mole is, which turns the whole film into a thrilling, fun, premium-edition Werewolf reality show. That said, for a fan like me who was hoping for a proper “Bird Box” sequel, it was just a tiny bit disappointing, because aside from borrowing the first film’s world, there’s almost no connection between the two, and it doesn’t reveal any more about who or what the monster really is.
Instead, there are a bunch of new rules tacked on just to make the plot flow, like “(spoiler) the monster’s approach makes electrical appliances become live with current” and other things that were never mentioned before. What I mean is, if you’re going to add a rule like that, you should tell us about it from the start, and at least bring it up a few times! Not wait until the crucial moment to suddenly go, “Hey, did you know? I can actually do this too~ Bet you didn’t see that coming, hahaha.” And the protagonists even use this rule to bail themselves out of danger as casually as breathing, leaving me sitting there utterly baffled.
To wrap things up~ if you loved the premise of “Bird Box” and you’ve been wanting to see a twin work of it appear, then I highly recommend giving this film a watch. But if you were hoping to understand the world of the first film more deeply and get answers to the questions it left unsolved, then sadly, this film won’t be giving you any more answers.
Alright! Thanks for tuning in today, everyone. If you’d like to see more, feel free to follow along~ Also, down below are a few more movies you might enjoy, so go take a look! See you next time.