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I have many unanswerable questions after watching Bird Box Barcelona. Why is this sequel to the deeply mediocre 2018 Netflix horror-thriller set in Spain? Who wanted a sequel to the otherwise complete story? And who is supposed to be excited to watch it?
The original, starring Sandra Bullock and Trevante Rhodes, went viral via a noxious meme-oriented marketing campaign. Sure, it had some creepy thrills and a good elevator pitch – an unseen force causes anyone who comes into visual contact with it to immediately and violently kill themselves, causing an apocalyptic scenario to unfold and the survivors to use strategic blindness to outsmart the monstrous invisible foe. But the conclusion is a let-down: it was the kind of film you’ve forgotten the morning after.
The second is even more drab – and more of a violent psychodrama than a straight-up thriller. A new cast of characters face the same world-destroying power and disappointingly, given gore is part of the draw, there is only the absolutely requisite amount of it, and it’s not very tactile, nor does it add much to the narrative. There are no jump-scares or indeed any scenes that require your attention for longer than it takes to look up from your phone.
The film focuses on former construction engineer Sebastian (Mario Casas), who, is desperate to protect his daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard) and is wandering a now sparsely-populated, corpse-littered Barcelona. He forms uneasy friendships with groups of fellow survivors, but rarely hangs on for long. Until he finds himself alongside Clare (Georgina Campbell), tasked with protecting a young German girl about his daughter’s age called Sofia (Naila Schuberth). Together, they seek out life-saving generators and try to understand the motivations of a mysterious priest.
In centring such an enigmatic protagonist with, as it transpires, some cultish beliefs, Bird Box Barcelona attempts to throw questions around about religion, aliens, and whatever other conspiracy theories people project onto that destructive unseen force. The message is that the greatest threat to humans is themselves. Their fate will be determined by their approach this force that they don’t understand.
That probably makes it sound an iota more interesting than it actually is. Instead, it is incredibly convoluted, stuffed with outlandish guff and religious idolatry. A belief pervades among some of the survivors, that the force has some connection to an afterlife, and it complicates matters significantly. It all feels like overkill for a story so unserious to begin with: I’d rather some actual scares than a half-hearted bid to grapple with deep moral or psychological enquiry.
All of this additional mythology is so tedious that I started to wonder why it’s even classed as a horror film. A woman squishing her head on a moving tyre? Tick. A guy cutting his own throat while smiling? Yawn. Nothing to see here, or at least nothing to make the skin crawl or from which to derive any real excitement.
The way for characters to survive in Bird Box Barcelona is to make themselves temporarily or permanently blind – some poor souls claw out their own eyes. Watching this film, you’ll be fighting the same urge.
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