When glimpsed, they induce immediate, overwhelming suicidal urges - or, in a chosen few, mind-controlled subservience that drives them to lead unsuspecting others to their doom. Written and directed by Alex and David Pastor, whose prior genre efforts “The Last Days” (2013) and “Carriers” (2009) both had similar basic premises, it finds a different cross-section of humanity imperiled by unseen but presumed space aliens. Instead, “ Bird Box Barcelona” is a “parallel story” set on another continent entirely. Inevitably, if belatedly, there’s now a follow-up - but not an adaptation of Malerman’s own print sequel, which continued the travails of the character played by Sandra Bullock. Susanne Bier’s film of Josh Malerman’s sci-fi horror novel was intriguing and suspenseful enough, even if its emphasis on psychological drama over thrills made for a somewhat unlikely breakout hit. So it comes as a surprise to realize that the original screen “Bird Box” arrived a full 14 months or so in advance of pandemic restrictions - becoming an early Netflix pop-culture phenomenon before lockdown made that sort of thing a regular occurrence. But it’s hard not to feel the apocalypse has moved on without them.ġ5 cert, 111 min.Five years ago seems aeons in an era so disrupted by COVID. The Bird Box beasts may be back in business, and perhaps in films to come we might even get a proper look at one. Not that the whole hypno-suicide thing helps: it soon proves to be less scary than just acutely depressing, with none of the depth or daring of the fatal eye-contact plot device in Jordan Peele’s Nope. What they actually do, though, is rob us of a central character to uncomplicatedly root for, which renders the viewing experience all the more grimly downbeat. In Mario Casas’s Sebastián, the protective father of 11-year-old Anna (Alejandra Howard), the Pastors have also come up with an unusual on-off hero whose often questionable actions are meant to keep our sympathies in flux. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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.
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