{"id":40358,"date":"2023-07-14T18:33:35","date_gmt":"2023-07-14T22:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=40358"},"modified":"2023-07-15T12:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-15T16:37:22","slug":"bird-box-barcelona-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/14\/bird-box-barcelona-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird Box: Barcelona (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Netflix\u2019s 2018 surprise hit \u201cBirdbox<\/a>\u201d was a pretty good movie that skated on thin ice from minute one since it was accused of aping the concept for \u201cA Quiet Place<\/a>.\u201d But the efforts of a sequel have firmly placed it as a movie better off left as a one and done horror film. \u201cBarcelona\u201d is considered kind of a sequel and kind of a spin off, but in reality it\u2019s kind of a glorified pilot. I don\u2019t know if Netflix is planning more sequels down the road, or a TV series, but \u201cBarcelona\u201d feels like the first of many incoming spin offs. And it never once feels like a complete movie, but only a buffer and promise of things to come. And as a follow up to the original, it fails epically assuring I won\u2019t be back to see how they further develop this premise.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Set in Barcelona this time, this follow up to \u201cBirdbox\u201d focuses on a lone survivor named Sebastian who flashes back to the original outbreak. The narrative follows him as he is faced with a cult of rare victims known as \u201cseers\u201d that are immune to the effects of the invisible monster that has caused people worldwide to take their own lives in vicious ways. He bonds with a young German Girl (Naila Schuberth) and an American tourist (Georgina Campbell) and travels to a potential safe haven, all while fleeing from those that can \u201csee.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Spanish language \u201cBirdbox: Barcelona\u201d only has one ace up its sleeve, and it expends it in the first twenty minutes with a turn of events that I was pretty astounded with. After that, \u201cBarcelona\u201d essentially runs on fumes that follow a protagonist who is almost impossible to root for. As Sebastian, Mario Casas isn\u2019t as strong a performer as Sandra Bullock and despite repeating the same themes about parenting and caring for children, \u201cBarcelona\u201d fails to hit the same emotional beats. The follow up operates on a skeleton of a narrative that coasts by mainly on thinking of new ways to murder the victims of the unseen force. Directors David and Alex Pastor inflict \u201cFinal Destination\u201d type deaths on various characters, all the while completely retconning the monster we learned about in the original.<\/p>\n

Aside from the fact that the monster can now be heard from afar, it can also manipulate victims with audible hallucinations, and the screenplay injects a wholly unnecessary religious context. While the original film left the idea of the monster completely inexplicable and sudden with only theories about what the world was experiencing, the script tacks on cheesy religious themes. Now there are talks about angels, and judgment day, and of course the seers are no longer mental patients but self-important religious zealots. While I\u2019m no fan of the way \u201cBirdbox\u201d subtly demonized mental illness, the whole religious cult concept is a tired trope that adds absolutely nothing to the overall film. Not even Georgina Campbell contributes much, as she\u2019s given more of a passive supporting role, and never gets a chance to really shine here.<\/p>\n

Campbell is a great actress who could have easily kept the movie afloat, but is not given too much to do. \u201cBarcelona\u201d is a slog to sit through, one that can barely muster up a decent premise before it\u2019s already off to the races setting up more sequels and potential spin offs. It\u2019s cheap and I\u2019m fine never re-visiting this world again.<\/p>\n

And please, we don’t need a sequel to “The Silence,<\/a>” either.<\/p>\n

Now Streaming Exclusively on Netflix.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Netflix\u2019s 2018 surprise hit \u201cBirdbox\u201d was a pretty good movie that skated on thin ice from minute one since it was accused of aping the concept for \u201cA Quiet Place.\u201d But the efforts of a sequel have firmly placed it as a movie better off left as a one and done horror film. \u201cBarcelona\u201d is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,104,367,477,703,906,922,1012,1087],"class_list":["post-40358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-apocalypse","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-mystery","tag-science-fiction","tag-sequel","tag-survival","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40358"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40366,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40358\/revisions\/40366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}