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If The Platform presented a Darwinian allegory, The Platform 2 is a metaphor for organised religion. It’s as if the unlikely Netflix franchise is tracing the very evolution of human existence. What next; the dark ages? Having released in the earliest stages of the pandemic in 2020, The Platform became a runaway hit — a movie about mass incarceration that was fantastical enough to not seem like a reflection of reality; at least, not the one that everyone was living in that moment. With its on-the-nose symbolism and sweeping social commentary, The Platform isn’t the only pre-pandemic sensation to have spawned a sequel in recent days.
But unlike Joker: Folie à Deux, which boldly deviates from its predecessor in interesting ways, The Platform 2 is more like Bird Box: Barcelona, the recent sequel to another of Netflix’s 2020 hits. Bird Box: Barcelona also shed the minimalism that made the original Bird Box so interesting, devoting itself instead to establishing dense lore. The Platform 2, for at least the first half, so closely resembles the original that you’re likely going to wonder if you’re watching a pointless rehash. But in the second half, the movie switches gears violently, as it sheds a drab aesthetic in favour of something more grandiose.
A still from The Platform 2.
Like the original, The Platform 2 is also set inside The Pit, a vertical prison where two inmates are housed on each floor that has a large square hole in the middle. It is through this opening that a smorgasbord of a food is lowered from the topmost level, all the way to the bottom. In the first film, the food would run out by the time the ‘platform’ reached the 50th floor — there are 333 in total — meaning that the people below would have to survive on nothing for the remaining month, after which floors are randomly reassigned again. One character decided that enough is enough, and decided to stage a symbolic revolution. But he entered the story after this self-contained eco-system had already descended into anarchy. Things weren’t always this lawless.
Certain inmates in The Platform 2 are almost militant about adhering to the rules, going to far as to punish and murder those that flout them. Our protagonist is a young woman named Perempuan, who is told in one of the film’s earliest scenes about a Jesus-like former prisoner named The Master, who survived a month without food in a lower level, and helped others below him by feeding them slices of his own body. His sacrifice inspired the entire Pit to rethink its ruleless ways. The unwritten commandments of the Pit — no stealing others’ food, no eating more than your fair share — are enforced with an iron fist by overzealous soldier-types, who are only too happy to use violence against the miscreants.
Perempuan is paired with a large man named Zamiatin, a new prisoner who struggles to adapt to the honour’s system inside the Pit, but slowly grows to develop a friendship with her. Like the first film, The Platform 2 deals with themes such as greed, consumerism, and social inequality. The microcosm of humanity that the Pit is, inmates are almost doomed to repeat the same self-destructive cycle over and over again, regardless of messiahs and maniacs, revolutionaries and rabble-rousers. An experiment meant to inspire generosity and empathy — everybody knows what’s at stake — instead shows how hard-wired people are to behave selfishly in moments of distress.
The only trouble is that the movie in no way feels as novel as the original did. Furthermore, it hurls the viewer directly into the ‘plot’ — whatever little there is — without so much as a brief recap. Returning director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia certainly has some fun in the third act, which pushes the story down arresting but mildly alienating new avenues. This is also when the dystopian science-fiction elements become more pronounced.
A still from The Platform 2.
An actual religious leader of sorts emerges; a long-haired, blindfolded man named Dagin Babi — think of him as a deeply unfortunate avatar of Paul Atreides from Dune. He brings with him an army of ‘loyalists’. The Pit is meant to represent a Dante-esque hellscape. We get it. But the world-building stands in stark contrast to the rather lean narrative of the first film. Its simplicity, in part, is what made it so striking. Combined, of course, with its dour spin on ‘the chosen one’ archetype. The Platform 2 lacks both relatable characters and radical ideas. Had the first film not existed, this one wouldn’t have been as disappointing. But it does, so it is.
The Platform 2
Director – Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Cast – Milena Smit, Hovik Keuchkerian, Natalia Tena, Óscar Jaenada
Rating – 2/5
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