I quite enjoyed the first Bird Box movie. There was something about the idea of trying not to see the monsters that taps into many of our childhood fears. If we keep our eyes shut, the monsters can’t get us.
Bird Box Barcelona is set in the same universe as Bird Box but is not exactly a sequel, as none of the characters are the same between the two movies. They are two different stories about different survivors in a world where if you see the monsters, you try to kill yourself.
Or at least most people do.
It was introduced in the first Bird Box that there are some who when they see the monsters do not desire death but rather desire that other people also see the monsters. That is the focus of the second movie.
This movie, as the name suggests, is set in Barcelona, Spain. I am going to give a spoiler, as I cannot really talk about the movie without sharing one major point.
We are introduced to a man named Sebastian and his daughter. He encounters a group of survivors and they invite him into their home, which is a bus terminal. Strangely, Sebastian leaves his daughter behind to spend the night with this group.
We think we know what is going on but we don’t. The survivors are sleeping in a bus and Sebastian finds the keys and drives the bus outside and forces those who survive to look at the monsters. Sebastian is actually one of those people who survive their encounter with the monsters and live for sharing the vision with others.
We learn later that they are called seers.
We also learn that his daughter, who is urging him to get more people to look at the monsters so that they can be together, is not really there. She is a hallucination brought on by the vision of the monsters.
Sebastian meets up with another group of survivors and starts his old plan of getting them to see the monsters, even though it leads to their death. Meanwhile, his old pastor, the one who introduced him to the monsters, is travelling around with a group on the same mission.
However, Sebastian begins to make a connection with a couple of the survivors. An inner struggle develops where he feels some compassion for them but his imaginary daughter is still insisting that he reveal the monsters to them. What happens? You can watch the movie to find out.
What did I think of it?
I had significant doubts during the first twenty minutes of the movie and I almost turned it off. It’s not that it was bad, just that I questioned that we needed to see this story again.
But the twist of having Sebastian be the seer rather than a survivor breathed some fresh air into the story. Still, it felt awkward to have the main character be a bad guy who was causing the death of innocent people.
By the time the movie was finished, I appreciated where the movie had gone. It was not the same story as the first Bird Box. I liked where the writers took us and ended up liking the movie.
I don’t think Barcelona was as good as the first Bird Box but it was still pretty good. I definitely have watched worse on Netflix.
