Checked out a horror flick that came out on Netflix a few months ago called The Platform. I’d heard good and bad things about the movie so, between that and that it’s a Spanish-language film, I put off giving it a try. Which was a mistake since it’s a pretty great movie! And it’s dubbed… and a particularly good dub as well. Good enough I didn’t bother switching to Spanish with English subtitles.
This is a pretty great little low budget film. It reminds me a lot of the movies Cube and Snowpiercer… like those two films (about a mysterious prison and a social allegory train) had a baby.
The premise is that there’s a prison of sorts set up as a tower with dozens or maybe even hundreds of floors. Each floor houses two prisoners and a rectangular hole on the ceiling and floor. Once a day, a platform full of food is slowly lowered, floor by floor. The prisoners on a floor have a few minutes to eat as much food as they can before it lowers to the next floor. Every thirty days, the prisoners are moved to another random floor. People at the top of the prison get the pick of all the food they want, those lower get less and less until there’s nothing left. You can see the allegory peeking through.
The Platform is a social allegory film that would make Rod Serling happy. Indeed, it’s the kind of situational storytelling with a social conscience that I could imagine the Twilight Zone tackling. It’s message is pretty clear while remaining steadfastly allegorical without any heavy-handed obvious messaging. I really thought it was smart and clever.
And, while it is smart, it’s also a challenging, difficult watch. The movie is pretty grisly at times. The desperation of those at the bottom of the prison… well, how else can two people survive when the food platform has no food for a month? Yeah, the gross implications of survival of the fittest or most ruthless happen and it’s a tough watch. But the movie is so well made, I think, that it’s not just pure exploitation. There’s a real gut punch to seeing the characters wake up on a very low floor, or waking up on a high one. That emotional truth is at the heart of this movie and makes the tough content more, ahem, palatable.
Or at least I hope that other people see the movie this way since I do recommend this film heartily. But it could be a tough watch for the more squeamish. I think it’s smart enough and the allegory works so well, you can get past that. And, once again, hey, it’s Netflix so you’re probably already paying for it.
Score: 88