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. 

The moral recalibration adds a certain refreshment to Bird Box Barcelona, which attempts something different from the first film. But the gambit has a middling payoff. Sebastián and Anna travel between survivor groups, their arrival in each triggering a perfunctory domino effect where, one by one, those survivors all die, horribly. None of the rampant death matters much. The film spends so little time with Sebastián’s hosts that their hypnotized suicides don’t leave an impression; it’s also so antiseptic that the audience doesn’t even get the satisfaction of visceral shock in their death scenes. Campbell’s performance as Claire, a psychiatrist who wound up stuck in Spain on account of bad timing, comes as a relief, in both the pleasure of watching her act and the likelihood that she’ll likely stick around ‘til Bird Box Barcelona’s end.

Casas is no slouch, though, and the investment he makes in both sides of Sebastián – his misgivings over his actions as he embeds himself in other parties, and the fidgety psychosis he develops in his efforts to protect Anna – open up new space in the Bird Box sandbox. Had the Pastors gone by the standard, he’d just be a normal guy surrendering to Armageddon. Bird Box Barcelona presents him as precarious and unpredictable, and this helps allay the problems with the film’s repetitive structure (not to mention its tendency to flinch). Diego Calva, too, makes a memorable character out of brief screen time, playing one of Claire’s companions, who comes closest to giving the film’s monsters grounding; he supposes they might be quantum beings, where every other indication Bird Box Barcelona provides suggests they’re divine, or perhaps demonic, in origin.

It’s to the Pastors’ credit that they withhold further identification of the entities’ background and purpose. If Bird Box Barcelona is really about anything, it’s that not every mystery, or every trauma, needs resolution, or even can be resolved in the first place; most characters’ arcs conclude without the satisfaction of knowing what the hell is happening, or the alleviation of their grief. In that way, the lack of focused exploration of the series’ antagonists is itself a comfort. The film’s admirable attempts at preserving its enigmas, while finding the greatest unsettling effect in commonplace human fanaticism, offer an experience unique from Bier’s work with Bullock. But Bird Box Barcelona’s lack of grit and prevailing aversion to the gruesome realities of its own premise are a drag on the details that click.

Directors: Álex Pastor, David Pastor
Writer: Álex Pastor, David Pastor
Starring: Mario Casas, Alejandra Howard, Georgina Campbell, Diego Calva, Naila Schuberth, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Lola Dueñas, Patrick Criado, Gonzalo de Castro
Release Date: July 14, 2023

Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.