‘Bird Box Barcelona’ review: cover your eyes, this Netflix sequel is terrible

In 2018, Bird Box terrified the world. The post-apocalyptic thriller focused on a society overrun by creatures that, if you saw them, would cause you to take your own life shortly after. It was creepy and compelling, its scenes of Sandra Bullock rowing blindfolded picked up on social media and turned into a viral challenge where people filmed themselves completing everyday tasks with their eyes covered. There were injuries. So many that Netflix issued a warning.

Five years on, the story is being picked up again by David and Àlex Pastor, who co-wrote Bird Box Barcelona with original Bird Box novelist Josh Malerman. This Spanish instalment isn’t so much a sequel as it is a parallel story – elements of it happen at the same time as the action in the first movie, spreading the deadly invasion to Europe.

It follows Sebastian (played by Mario Casas), who travels through Barcelona wearing dark goggles, and his 11-year-old daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard) on their quest for survival. They form a group of people trying to find refuge at a fortress in the mountains, going through bleak struggles to avoid being part of the next batch of suicides. Some members of the group sadly fall by the wayside, leaving just the core contingent to struggle on.

While Bird Box horrified us, Bird Box Barcelona doesn’t have the same effect. The acting is good, as is the cinematography – think lots of overhead, dramatic shots of the fortress, an apocalyptic cityscape and bodies upon bodies. But the script lets the whole thing down. If the first movie found fear in what we didn’t know, then this edition decides it must explain every last thing, diluting down all the scares and taking all the dark fun out of the film.

It also doesn’t add anything particularly surprising or fresh to the plot, mostly retreading old ground instead. There are a few, very minor updates, but none of them are particularly effective. Religion gets added to the mix with priest Father Esteban (Leonardo Sbaraglia) declaring the lethal visions as an act of God, helping to rescue lost souls from their earthly bodies and deliver them to heaven. When someone dies after seeing the creatures – who now take the form of a multitude of different beings, from demons to aliens – a light flashes from their bodies, presumably trying to reinforce the priest’s spiritual theory.

The characters too aren’t fleshed out enough or written in a way that makes you root or care for them – even as they’re going through such horrors. There’s suggestions that Sebastian – and even Anna – aren’t necessarily good people, perhaps with the intention of making us question who is worth saving, but the information we’re given isn’t really enough to make you passionately get behind a stance on that subject.

With heavy-handed plot lines about misinformation, trauma and the struggle of evolution, Bird Box Barcelona often feels like the writers have picked subjects from recent headlines and tried to craft them into a moralising horror film. Unfortunately for them – and for us – the results aren’t good, leaving you hoping for the film series to go the way of its characters’ blindfolded vision – very, very dark.

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