Say this for The Platform 2: it gets right to it. Without so much of a recap of its predecessor – a sci-fi horror parable that became a Netflix hit a few years back – characters are debating philosophies of law and economics inside of 10 minutes. By the 40-minute mark, a major character has already committed self-immolation. It’s remarkably fast-paced for a movie set in a series of unadorned rooms that make up an enormous vertical prison.
The workings of this prison were detailed in the first film, and are easy enough to pick up this time around, even without much newbie-friendly exposition: prisoners, who can opt into the structure called the Pit for punishment or in some other kind of exchange, are randomly assigned a different level each month, usually shared with another prisoner. Once a day, a mobile platform descends from the top (level 0) to the bottom (somewhere in the 300s, it’s thought), packed with a succulent variety of foods, lingering for a few minutes on each floor. (Each prisoner gets to pick one favorite item to be included.) Prisoners at the top can, if they so choose, selfishly avail themselves of whatever they want within the time limit. If (when) they do, greed begets more greed, inevitably leaving little to nothing for the poor, desperate souls on the bottom. Of course, everyone’s fortunes can change on a monthly basis; someone on top could easily be shunted down to the bottom, and vice versa. These constant changes should inspire empathy; mostly, they inspire panic and more practically minded selfishness. In other words: eat up now, because who knows where you’ll be next month.
As the sequel begins, the prisoners have organized, putting their own unofficial but exacting rules into place: each prisoner must only eat the food they specifically requested, and nothing more, unless someone else agrees to a trade. If everyone abides by this, theoretically no one will go hungry. Easier said than done, of course; all it takes is for one person to eat someone else’s pizza, bad roommate-style, to throw things out of balance. That’s the precise situation that Zamiatin (Hovik Keuchkerian) encounters on his first day in the Pit. A grim-looking man who walks around shirtless and shaves every part of his body that he can reach, presenting as a tough-guy vulgarian, Zamiatin demands swift justice. His bunkmate, Perempuan (Milena Smit), meanwhile, urges caution. Surprisingly, she does get through to him, and they become genuine friends even as other clashes ripple through the various levels. Soon the pair finds themselves embroiled in a conflict between a self-designated “anointed one” who insists on fundamentalist enforcement of the rules (dictating, for example, that if a prisoner dies, their food must be discarded, not redistributed) and those who agitate for greater “freedom” (despite the fact that none of them are really free at all).
Their place within this conflict changes so quickly the movie might induce whiplash. Even the movie’s central metaphor keeps shifting; at times, it takes aim at the questionable economics of capitalism, the questionable feasibility of true social or economic equality, the fervor of religious true believers, and the nasty violence that may be inherent in human nature, among others. Returning director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia tears through all of these worthy subjects in a chaotic, bloody scrum that includes weaponized cannibalism, harrowingly nonsensical backstories and other manners of grotesquerie both visual and narrative.
The grindhouse thought experiments can be engaging, and a sign that the movie is more interested in speculative fiction than in preaching toward a single specific theme. But the movie rampages too quickly and carelessly to really dig into any of its characters; Perempuan emerges as the lead, and though Smit is fine in the role, the ground beneath her keeps shifting. Eventually, the movie skips ahead to something more novel: an eerie, green-lit sequence that brings both sci-fi and slow-building suspense back into the proceedings. (Even the ever-present blood splatter becomes more poetic.) Then it barrels ahead further, into a head-scratching final stretch that doesn’t gain any clarity by continuing on into the end credits. Gaztelu-Urrutia seems to be regarding his own concept from level 0, treating it as a frantic all-you-can-eat buffet that may be snatched away at any moment.
The Platform 2 is now available on Netflix
