Netflix Spin-Off Bird Box Barcelona Offers Good Performances and a Disappointing Aversion To Violence
A Bird Box movie should have two things: Birds, and boxes to put ’em in. Susanne Bier’s 2018 original, a huge hit by Netflix’s nebulous, self-reporting standards, had both; Bird Box Barcelona, Álex and David Pastor’s sequel, has little of the first and none of the second, which sort of spoils the point. Other key elements carry over from Bier’s film, of course. In order to work, Bird Box Barcelona requires the presence of Bird Box’s ineffable big bads, whose visage induces suicidal madness in any poor sap who lays eyes on them. Like Bier, the brothers Pastor never show the things on screen; a movie can’t become a hit if audience members keep killing themselves. We just know they’re there.
But unlike Bier, the Pastors don’t have a bankable star supported by an ensemble of recognizable names. There is no Sandra Bullock; there is no John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, Lil Rel Howery or Trevante Rhodes. Transplanting Bird Box’s basic conceit from the U.S. means cobbling together a cast who don’t spark with stateside audiences, which is fine; the absence of familiarity actually creates auxiliary tension. At least we had the comfort of Sandy in the first movie. Here we have Georgina Campbell, whose work in Barbarian makes a compelling case for placement in horror cinema’s topmost tier of great leads.
Campbell isn’t Bird Box Barcelona’s lead, though. That’s actually Mario Casas, playing anxious father Sebastián, safeguarding his daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard) through Barcelona in the post-apocalypse. The place is a ruin, practically empty except for fellow survivors making their way across the city blindfolded, and, necessarily, the entities, heralded by the whispers of the dead and the levitation of whatever objects litter the ground. Like any dad, Sebastián is determined to find shelter and safety for his child, which can only be found through the compassion of strangers, but strangers can be hazardous. When Sebastián and Anna come across a band of survivors early in Bird Box Barcelona, he instructs her to hide until he determines whether or not they’re good people.
Sebastián is a good dad with an effective gauge for identifying good people. He might not be a good person himself. Bird Box sets up a cast of characters with varied ethics and interests, because putting a handful of strangers in a single location during the end times naturally incites conflict. It doesn’t for a moment suggest that any one of those characters might betray the others to their peril. The film waits to spring that trap until much later, with the addition of several newcomers. Bird Box Barcelona strips away that accord, the fundamental understanding that yes, people may chafe one another, but they won’t throw anybody under the bus to save their own skin or to serve an ulterior purpose; the film wades through murky waters instead, with Sebastián as its unreliable witness.