Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bird Box Barcelona’ on Netflix, a Spanish Spinoff of the Surprise Sandra Bullock Sci-fi Hit

From the It’s A Spinoff Not A Sequel Dept. comes Bird Box Barcelona (now on Netflix), a Spanish-language thriller that tells a story from the same universe as Bird Box, the high-concept post-apocalyptic movie that many, many people streamed on Netflix in 2018, possibly because they were bored and had nothing better to do than watch Sandra Bullock do asinine things in the service of a premise that’s far too ludicrous to be taken seriously. But the movie sure asked us to grimface it through its eyeroller of a saga – based on Josh Malerman’s novel – about a mysterious and malevolent force (possibly space aliens or something; it’s not made clear) that compels any humans who even look at it to immediately die by suicide. Civilization has collapsed, and the few remaining survivors grope their way through the decimated, corpse-ridden landscape wearing blindfolds and fighting with each other because, you know, that’s the tragedy of the human condition. But here’s the new wrinkle: some people can actually look at the whatevers and live to tell the tale. The other wrinkle is, those people might not be right in the head. And that’s where Bird Box Barcelona begins.

BIRD BOX BARCELONA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Anna (Alejandra Howard) finally removes her blindfold, and what does she see? Not a diabolically wicked whatnot that wants her to die for reasons that will not be explained in this movie, but her father, Sebastian (Mario Casas), who’s holding a pair of roller skates, and has led her to an empty gymnasium. She grins and giggles as she zooms and spins across the floor. It’s a small slice of joy in a godawful miserable existence, and of course, it’s fleeting. They hear a noise and have to vamoose immediately. Now, I have to remind you that one of the Rules of Bird Box is that the aliens or creatures or ethereal sentient enigmas or whatever are incredibly powerful, so powerful they can get in a person’s head and make them do horrible things to themselves, but they haven’t figured out how to open a door or a window, so people are safe inside as long as the windows are covered. Whether the curtains need to be of the room-darkening variety or if one could get away with something a bit more gauzy isn’t certain. But what is certain is that the Bird Box movies are asking us to swallow a conceptual horse pill that’s the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, and I just can’t f—ing get past that.

But we’ll soldier on, because we must – and just like Sebastian and Anna must. Yet I must proceed with a vagueness, lest the spoiler police march me to the woods and make me dig my own grave. The plot establishes three general types of human survivors: The blindfolded types that band together for survival’s sake, the types that Sebastian and Anna sometimes hang out with; let’s call them the Regular Folk. There are also packs of blind people, who aren’t a major element of this story, but they roam the decimated streets of Barcelona, and at one point beat up our protagonists and take their food. And then there’s the folks who can look at the “entities” and somehow not kill themselves; let’s call them the Wackos. The Wackos are the catalyst of this plot because they consider themselves chosen ones on a mission to “save” people by forcing them to look at the “entities,” which prompts us to wonder if thee Wackos’ dogmatic religious fervor is the result of the “entities” possessing their minds and forcing them to do their bidding. Seems like the “entities” might save a lot of time if they learned to operate a doorknob instead, but never mind.

We’re subject to occasional flashbacks from nine, eight, seven months earlier, chronicling Sebastian and Anna’s story, and therefore allowing the filmmakers to show the same scenes of chaotical pandelerium from the first Bird Box – you know, cars crashing and planes diving and shocking mass suicides as the great and awful whatever sweeps the globe – except in a different city this time. It also eventually explains why Sebastian and Anna tend to be loners. They join a group of survivors, some of whom are willing to give our protags the benefit of the doubt, and others who are suspicious of any and all strangers, and it’s a situation we’re all familiar with, because it’s in every goddamn movie, TV show, comic book and novel about postapocalyptic survival, whether it’s about aliens, zombies, germs, the rapture or what have you. 

The rapture is definitely a reference point here, since the Wackos watch in slackjawed awe when the Regular Folk die, because their “souls” or whatever they might be fly up and out of their bodies on beams of golden light. Anyway, Claire (Georgina Campbell) and a girl who’s not her daughter, Sofia (Naila Schuberth), are the only other characters in Sebastian and Anna’s sphere worth mentioning, because they’re supposed to make us think about Sandra Bullock and her kids from the first movie. Oh, there’s also an older couple among the Regular Folk who had some marital problems in the Before Times, but nobody gives a single shit about that. After all, this movie is about the Wackos vs. the Regular Folk, which is a metaphor for our current politically divided world, but only if you want it to be.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Bird Boxes are for the sense of sight what the A Quiet Places are for the sense of hearing. They also bring to mind The Mist and The Road, but since those are good movies, those comparisons seem too generous. No, Bird Box and its not-a-sequel are more of a mind with M. Night Shyamalan’s eminently laughable ultra-misfire The Happening, which is a comparison I never, ever make lightly.

Performance Worth Watching: I’ll just say that this isn’t going to be among the highlights of Casas (winner of many Spanish film awards) and Campbell’s (the courageous lead in 2022’s wild Barbarian) resumes, although it’s no fault of their own.

Memorable Dialogue: I won’t say which characters participate in this exchange, which reveals some insight into the Wackos:

Character no. 1: Brother – you’ve seen them too.

Character no. 2: Their ships have traveled millions of light years. They’ll take us to the stars.

Character no. 1: No, brother. They’re angels.

Sex and Skin: None. The only one doing any poking is you, putting holes in the plot. 

Our Take: Bird Box introduced us to The Premise, and all but asked us not to question it despite the myriad absurdities that put our suspension of disbelief inside a pressure cooker and crank the dial. Bird Box Barcelona follows a similar plot outline – Regular Folk risk life and limb seeking a rumored safe zone – while lazily shoehorning in some faith-vs.-reason text that’s muddled, sensationalist, as subtle as an elephant seal hiding in your bikini briefs and constantly undermined by the characters’ inability to make a decision that doesn’t rebel against all logic and common sense. I’ll reiterate my assertion that we shouldn’t buy this premise for a half-penny on a BOGO bargain, and this Spanish spinoff doesn’t sweeten the deal at all. 

There’s something to be said about maintaining the mystery of the “entities,” and clinging to the metaphor that life is full of inexplicable things that we just need to compartmentalize and manage in order to not lose ourselves and our minds. But it also gives storytellers license to allow the “entities” to continually shift the boundaries of the movie’s internal “rules” as the plot needs. Example: At a critical point in the story, one of the characters says EFF IT and removes their blindfold, and it’s the one time when the “entities” don’t bother to appear, thus allowing the character to accomplish a task that’s incredibly difficult to do while blindfolded. The character then puts the blindfold back on in order to accomplish a second task that’s incredibly difficult to do while blindfolded. And I am enraged.

Perhaps I missed a plot detail – which happens when you’re continually being pushed out of the movie by its ragingly insistent inconsistencies – or I’m simply being a pedant, but BBB doesn’t inspire enough investment in its characters and bigger ideas to effectively compel us to overlook such things. Directors Alex and David Pastor give us a not-always-sympathetic protagonist who’s fraught with inner conflict, and they’ve clearly spent a lot of money conjuring up a convincing post-apocalyptic world with all the wrecked vehicles, busted-up buidlings and grotesque displays of human remains we’ve seen in everything from 28 Days Later to Finch. But said protagonist is a flimsy cipher working his way through a generic setting, unable to fight off the jive-turkey of this flawed premise. It’s been five years since the first Bird Box, but the makers of this spinoff didn’t spend that time making the concept any less birdbrained. 

Our Call: You are not one of the “entities.” You can open a door. And you can push these wack-ass Bird Box movies right out that door and slam it behind them and lock the slide-bolt and the deadbolt and the chain and the one in the knob and flip down the foot lever and jam a doorstop in there and pile a whole bunch of furniture in front of it. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.