Bird Box Barcelona
NETFLIXThis piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.
After the considerable success of 2018’s Bird Box, Netflix seems interested in developing local language spinoffs based on the world of Josh Malerman’s book of the same name. It’s unclear how many spinoffs will be made, but the streamer announced that it would be shared in the same universe as the original movie. The first is Bird Box Barcelona, which stars Mario Casas as Sebastián, who scours Barcelona with his daughter, Anna (Alejandra Howard), as they look for food and supplies. The two meet a group of survivors who bring Sebastián to their colony. The world has been changed by an unexplained phenomenon that causes people to randomly kill themselves after viewing an invisible entity living outdoors and prying on the humans’ trauma and grief. Sebastián has looked at it but hides his true nature from the colony and, the next morning purposefully crashes a bus outside with everyone in it to make them “see.”
It's revealed that Sebastián has been radicalized by whatever is outside posing as his daughter, promising they will reunite once he “frees” enough people (Sebastián lost his daughter and wife during the phenomenon's onset and is now looking for people to kill all over Barcelona), doesn’t that sound like a great character to hold on to? He finds his next victims in Claire (Georgina Campbell), Sofia (Nalia Schuberth), Octavio (Diego Calva), and Rafa (Patrick Criado). Still, he develops a moral grey area once he sympathizes with Claire and Sofia. Imagine that.
While Susanne Bier’s Bird Box wasn’t a very good movie –– fine, but never escalated above average –– it was nevertheless held together by an amazingly captivating lead performance from Sandra Bullock and her willingness to bring Girl (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Boy (Julian Edwards) to safety after the death of Tom (Trevante Rhodes). Bird Box Barcelona has no “protagonist” for audiences to attach themselves to because the man they are asked to sympathize with has become a full-fledged psychopath, believing he is doing the right thing by killing countless individuals. It’s unclear how many he has killed from the moment audiences meet him, but it feels like a big ask for audiences to attach themselves to someone who crashes a bus and kills everyone in it within the film’s first fifteen minutes.
As he starts to fight whatever is controlling his mind, the protagonist’s arc is already too far gone. Co-writers and directors Álex and David Pastor make the cardinal mistake of trying to find the humanity inside a man who has lost it instead of making Claire, Octavio, and Rafa their main characters. Sebastián has no redeeming qualities, even when he realizes what he is doing and begins to quasi-redeem himself, regardless of how many flashbacks the Pastor brothers add to infuse sympathy and humanity into the character. Sure, it wasn’t necessarily his fault that his wife and daughter were killed. Still, the movie gives absolutely no compelling reason for the audience to root for the protagonist because his mind has been corrupted, and scenes where he “communicates” with his daughter aren’t real.
Bird Box Barcelona also doesn’t explain the creature’s mechanics –– why can Sebastián hide his changing eyes after seeing “it” while other people immediately kill themselves? They haphazardly say it could be an element found in their blood. However, since the movie briefly alludes to this and never mentions it again, it is deemed unimportant. It should be the most important reveal of the entire film, but the Pastor brothers ensure that every emotional “revelation” falls completely flat. Like a certain spy movie coming out this week, some humans who have seen “it” treat the creature as their personal God and act as its messiah, but the Biblical subtexts are barely stitched together by a Priest (Leonardo Sbaraglia), believing he has seen the light through the creature, wanting to open everyone else’s eyes. As an antagonist, he is pitifully uninteresting. As a metaphor for Christianity, he’s even more dull.
The only interesting character in this film is Claire, played with great emotional power by Georgina Campbell. If anything, she should’ve been the film’s protagonist instead of Sebastián, whose moral challenge isn’t as enthralling as the filmmakers think it is. Campbell commands every ounce of the screen and consistently steals the spotlight away from Casas and Calva, whose talents are massively underused. Campbell is the emotional core of the movie. It is the only reason anyone should ever bother clicking “play,” even if her character makes decisions that defy the logic this world has laid out when it comes to taking off blindfolds outside.
The action scenes are also poorly made, shot, and edited. The visual effects are fine, but the film seems to craft a spectacle to not disturb the audience instead of enhancing the overall story. It is a challenge to ask audiences to invest themselves in the movie by following the tribulations of a serial killer instead of a strong-willed character with an actual reason to survive this dystopian world, played by the only actor who gives a damn. Who knows how many local offsets will be made (still holding out hope for Bird Box Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan) with Malerman’s novel (only two Bird Box books were written), but if Bird Box Barcelona is the sign of quality these spinoffs will give, it’s best not to make any of them anymore.
With the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes ongoing, it’s clear that the streaming model will have to change and that the current strategy isn’t working. If it were working, audiences and creatives would know. But Netflix is desperate to capitalize on the moderate success of one movie they believe it’ll launch an equally commercially viable cinematic universe of movies and TV shows. Spoiler alert: No one wanted Bird Box Barcelona, and no one wants Bird Box Rome either (if that will ever get made).