Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Screenwriter: David Desola, Pedro Rivero, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, Egoitz Moreno Cast: Hovik Keuchkerian, Milena Smit Distributor: Netflix Running Time: 101 min. MPAA: R

The Platform was messy, but its staging was suitable enough for capitalism satire. The idea is that individuals who are either poor or prisoners are given a chance at success if they can survive a vertical prison where food travels down on a platform each day. Whether you eat depends on if the people above don’t eat all the food. Every few days, the prisoners are moved to a different level and the struggle constantly shifts. Though sloppy with its messaging that gets lost in a smearing of concrete dystopian presentation and gritty violence, the damning indictment is loud enough to resonate.

Platform 2, however, takes that same structure and uses it to comment on socialism, barbarism, religion, and corruption. It’s a film that doesn’t seem to build on much, based on its fresh round of characters that includes Perempuan (Milena Smit) and Zamiatin (Hovik Keuchkerian), more notable for the food they eat than the backstories they have. This batch of Platform players has a system going, where they maintain a chain of communication regarding who will eat what when the platform descends. If they stick to the food they choose before entering, every level will eat. Of course, things go south when someone decides to defecate on Zamiatin’s precious pizza. Chaos is coming.

But we already know chaos is coming. Even if you haven’t seen previous film, the staging makes it clear that something violent is going to go down. What makes the movie less appealing is that it seems more focused on getting lost in the mechanics of the Platform experiment than the backstories of those within. There are a few glimpses here and there of the two roommates being interviewed for entrance into The Platform, but they reveal little worth exploring. The film seems especially disinterested in them as people, considering one of the roommates is killed off before the movie is even half over, replaced by a new character we don’t have time to know about. A sinking feeling rises in my stomach as though I’m watching a reality show as a viewer, taking in the horrors with the same mindless thrills of those who missed the point of Squid Game.

The one character we hear a lot about in the echoes of the Platform is Dagin Babi (Óscar Jaenada), a leader who enacts punishments for those who break the rules established by the Platform. He keeps the barbarians at bay who consume more than their fair share, but also those who go against his rule by seeking immediate vegence against the feuding levels. This would be an intriguing development if it weren’t for how he was reduced to little more than a tyrant who has to be obliterated with his violent followers. Perhaps there was something worth exploring in the primal nature of his big clash with the protagonist, but there’s little room to explore the character beyond how grotesque he is with using the platform itself to cut off arms.

The Platform 2 is a wasted opportunity for its dystopian staging that sufficed well for one film but not a second. The ultimate resolution ends up being similar to the first movie but with a bitter frustration for not knowing who the real enemy of our well-being truly is. We knew damn well it was the people at the top dictating the food that made our lives hell, but this sequel simplifies it to such a maddening degree that it’s hard to give a shit that someone took a dump on The Platform 2 is a wasted opportunity for its dystopian staging that sufficed well for one film. The ultimate resolution ends up being similar to the first movie but with a bitter frustration for not knowing the real enemy of our well-being. We knew damn well it was the people at the top dictating the food that made our lives hell, but this sequel simplifies it to such a maddening degree that it’s hard to give a shit that someone took a dump on Zamiatin’s pizza. We are manipulated under capitalism, and a film this scattershot seems to suggest we’ll still be manipulated under any economic model. With that perhaps unintentional bile in the messaging, this film ends up being little more than a surface-level leftover, not as tasty the second time around.

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