We’ll do the tally for you: No Sandra Bullock, only some birds (and not in boxes), plenty of blindfolds, and the singular desire to make audiences (further) loathe humanity. Such is the movie math at play in David Pastor and Àlex Pastor’s “Bird Box Barcelona,” a continuation (if not a true sequel) to the 2018 smash Netflix hit “Bird Box.” While Susanne Bier’s post-apocalyptic drama featured, yes, plenty of Sandra Bullock and birds (in boxes), it also carried with it an affection for the better side of humanity. At the very least, the thriller made the case that some people deserve to be saved, especially if they have to undergo insane and intense trials to get there. The Pastors’ companion feature, co-written with “Bird Box” novelist Josh Malerman, has zero room for such niceties.
Like many post-lockdown features, “Bird Box Barcelona” leans hard into its timely! elements, including a hefty throughline about the nefarious power of misinformation, the way trauma distorts our brains, and how difficult it can be to positively evolve in the face of upheaval. That means ascribing a tremendous amount of — ultimately, maybe not even real? — backstory to the nightmarish entity that has destroyed humanity, including where it came from and what it wants from us. While the first film recognized that the power of what we don’t know makes for a much better time at the movies, “Bird Box Barcelona” is consumed with explaining everything, even if final revelations seem intent on unstitching all that new information.
It starts with the familiar: A father (Mario Casas) and his young daughter (Alejandra Howard) set out for a spin around an abandoned roller rink. Her eyes clamped shut, Anna asks the perpetual question to her cautious dad Sebastian: “Can I open my eyes now?” And she can, because Sebastian has ensured that no one else is with them, no other people, no evil entities, and thus he and his only remaining loved one might be able to enjoy a spot of fun. Whatever horrible event brought to Earth the unseen baddies of the “Bird Box” franchise — invisible specters that, when viewed head-on, do something so awful that it inspires the people who see them to instantly, violently kill themselves — happened awhile ago but Sebastian and Anna have adapted. Sort of.
After their brief, be-wheeled foray, the pair set out into a ruined Barcelona, where they are almost instantly accosted by a trio of blind (!) thieves who take their scant food and run off, leaving a bloody Sebastian struggling to keep it together. But Sebastian has a plan — one we soon discover he’s utilized many times since this particular pandemic unfolded — and it requires finding “good people” to assist him and a hidden Anna. But what if Sebastian himself is not a good person?
Fans of the first film will likely thrill at the world the Pastors plunge us into, including a series of impressive overhead shots that show off ruined cityscapes, from broken highways to crashed jet planes, a beach littered with bodies, a street littered with bodies, sides of buildings littered with bodies (you get it). Less effective is a hammy flashback that takes us nine months earlier, when a then-clean-cut Sebastian was just trying to get through a seemingly normal day before the entire world went to hell. The flashback provides plenty of context as to why Sebastian has started infiltrating various groups of “good people,” not always with the best of intentions, but even that backstory does little to make us empathize with him.
Maybe that’s just how things are going to be from now on. Maybe we’ve seen enough bad behavior, nefarious misinformation, and selfish attitudes IRL to suck away our ability to give in to them on the big screen. Yes, Sebastian has suffered, but so has everyone else in the fictitious world of “Bird Box,” and as his chilling plans continue to unfold, they don’t make for thrilling entertainment, they just make for feel-bad content, the kind of stuff that might inspire you to yell at your TV before just going ahead and shutting it off.
Even for those who stick with it, the twists and turns and new rules the Pastors and Malerman attempt to lay out for Sebastian and the many people (including a very underused Diego Calva and Georgina Campbell) he meets along the way fail to make much sense. The decision to “see” how the entities see adds nothing, swapping dogs for birds is just another way to add more heartbreaking gore to the feature, and the faux-religious angle that overtakes its narrative (and, it seems, Sebastian himself) is paper-thin.
“Bird Box” worked because it found the terror in the unknown, while its first follow-up is compelled to pile on answer after answer, even if they’re ultimately untrue, even if they’re mostly flimsy, even if they leave audiences actually praying for the end of humanity (or at least this strain of filmmaking about them). By the time a bird appears — in a box, to boot! — “Bird Box Barcelona” has strayed so far from what made the first film interesting, scary, and yes, timely! that it remains but a distant memory, as if someone pulled a blindfold over our collective cinematic memory, for no real reason whatsoever, with no answers to ever be found.
Grade: C-
“Bird Box Barcelona” starts streaming on Netflix on Friday, July 14.
