Bird Box Barcelona – What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Stronger, or Mentally Insane

Brid Box Barcelona takes place in the same universe as the original Bird Box movie. Instead of a story about a mother trying to save her children, this one features a father trying to reunite with his lost family. With a greater focus on the monster more than characters, Bird Box Barcelona had its moments, but I still preferred the first movie.

Bird Box Barcelona was a fun movie to watch if you want to turn off your brain. If you’re expecting a strong cast of characters like the first movie, you’ll be thoroughly disappointed. However, in its place, we get to experience the movie from a different perspective, and greater importance is put on the monster. If you enjoyed the first movie for its characters, you won’t feel the same for this one. However, if you want to learn a bit more about the monster, this does cover that area a bit more.

So, let’s get into the review. As usual, this will be your spoiler warning. I do want to say I had fun watching it. Was it a great movie? Not really. The characters were quite weak, and the plot left a bit to be desired. However, it was interesting seeing this universe from a different perspective. Now that you’ve been warned, let’s get into this.

The main premise of the movie is to show Sebastian’s journey. The big twist this time around is that Sebastian has seen the creature. Now, instead of killing himself, Sebastian now tries to get others to see the light. Yup, we get to watch the villain this time around. From this perspective, I do like how they managed that.

Throughout the movie, you get to see Sebastian interact with his daughter Anna. From a delusional man, I thought it was intriguing and a bit creepy watching him talk to a ghost. I also like how this implies how the monster of this universe communicates to his followers. Another aspect I liked about this perspective is how we get to see what happens when people die in these people’s eyes. Seeing the ethereal golden spirit leave the bodies was an interesting touch.

As if almost reaffirming what the “seers”, as they are referred to later, deem is right. There is a lot of religious imagery playing into this, particularly Christianity, where the seers are leading the lost souls to their “God”. The final detail I like about this situation as it portrays to Sebastian, is that when he finally realizes what he’s doing is wrong, the golden light he sees disappearing from the corpses no longer shows up, proving that everything was in his head the whole time.

Now, another interesting part of the movie has to be the deaths. In the original Bird Box, I have to say that most of the deaths felt pretty tame compared to this one. Netflix really got creative in Bird Box Barcelona. I think my favourite kill was when the doctor, from the first group Sebastian targets, gets her neck broken by pressing her face against a spinning tire. Brutal and gruesome, and probably the only interesting thing that happens for a while in the movie. If you aren’t someone who likes watching interesting human deaths, then I don’t think there’s much to enjoy this movie.

Let’s get into some of the specifics of why I think some of the movie was a disappointment compared to the first. The biggest thing is that the cast was weak compared to the first movie. In Bird Box, I was able to relate and understand the characters. They were interesting, especially how they interacted with each other. In Bird Box Barcelona, the characters felt one-dimensional, and they didn’t really have any chemistry together. If anything, the characters felt like placeholders, to be killed off when the plot deemed it so.

When it comes to plot, this one was quite weak as well. In the first movie, we get an interesting parallel storyline, where everything lead up to a singular point. In Bird Box Barcelona, we get the occasional flashback to explain the present situation. It just wasn’t as mentally stimulating. The plot itself was also quite simple.

Sebastian arrives somewhere and kills a bunch of people because he thinks he’ll be reunited with his family. Then he finds the one group, where after killing off half of them, changes his ways to save two people. Normally, I like simple plots so that other areas of a movie can be developed, like the characters. But in this case, everything felt a bit hollow. The only good thing about the movie was how much action was present and how much the monster gets explored.

Overall, I think Bird Box Barcelona was alright. It had some interesting moments involving the creature, but the overall plot and characters were lacking. This movie is also all in Spanish, so if you aren’t proficient in that language, be prepared to read.