 you soon. Like its forerunner, Bird Box: Barcelona is a functional survival story that plies its suspenseful trade deep in the shadow of the superior A Quiet Place films. The threats in those were sharp-eared alien crab things that eviscerated anyone who made a sound; their Bird Box counterparts are almost entirely unseen beings that psychically compel any human who looks at them to kill themselves. These concepts are not equally cinematically compelling, though, so in place of A Quiet Place's don't-dare-to-twitch aural tension – can our heroes make it down the stairs without stepping on a creaky floorboard, or an upturned nail? – are extended rounds of Blind Man's Buff: Judgement Day Edition, as the cast bump and fumble their way around the place with their eyes covered up. The most conspicuous change – apart from the film being almost entirely in Spanish – is that the new fraternal writing-directing team, David and Àlex Pastor, have put the premise's scriptural echoes to work. Now, whenever one of the beings' victims tops themselves, we see their soul go twisting up skywards in the form of a glowing ball, a bit like a video-game banana when it's been collected by Donkey Kong. And the main mortal villain is Father Esteban (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a crazed priest who views the creatures' arrival as the rapture, and smears ashen third eyes across the foreheads of survivors before compelling them to look into the light. In Mario Casas's Sebastián, the protective father of 11-year-old Anna (Alejandra Howard), the Pastors have also com){kind=link}
Set at the same time but in a different place, this kind-of sequel to the 2018 post-apocalyptic potboiler fails to make the pulse quicken
Five years after the apocalyptic thriller Bird Box turned into a runaway success for Netflix, here is… well, not so much a sequel or prequel as a localised simultaneo-quel, in which we watch the same extraterrestrial invasion play out in a different place: urban Spain. If this one’s also a hit, stand by for Bird Box: Beijing, Bird Box: Bangalore and Bird Box: Bognor Regis, all coming to tick a demographic box somewhere near (or not so near) you soon.
Like its forerunner, Bird Box: Barcelona is a functional survival story that plies its suspenseful trade deep in the shadow of the superior A Quiet Place films. The threats in those were sharp-eared alien crab things that eviscerated anyone who made a sound; their Bird Box counterparts are almost entirely unseen beings that psychically compel any human who looks at them to kill themselves.
These concepts are not equally cinematically compelling, though, so in place of A Quiet Place’s don’t-dare-to-twitch aural tension – can our heroes make it down the stairs without stepping on a creaky floorboard, or an upturned nail? – are extended rounds of Blind Man’s Buff: Judgement Day Edition, as the cast bump and fumble their way around the place with their eyes covered up.
The most conspicuous change – apart from the film being almost entirely in Spanish – is that the new fraternal writing-directing team, David and Àlex Pastor, have put the premise’s scriptural echoes to work. Now, whenever one of the beings’ victims tops themselves, we see their soul go twisting up skywards in the form of a glowing ball, a bit like a video-game banana when it’s been collected by Donkey Kong. And the main mortal villain is Father Esteban (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a crazed priest who views the creatures’ arrival as the rapture, and smears ashen third eyes across the foreheads of survivors before compelling them to look into the light.