Bringing home an international title of proven success is, at the very least, a risky act from which getting out seems entirely complicated. A priori we check that “Bird Box Barcelona” she does her homework and builds on herself a parallel universe to the one presented in her counterpart (with the goal in mind of not giving the viewer a story riddled with passages with a predictable outcome and thus being able to grow beyond the original story). Whether or not the path that he manages to build is worthy of our curiosity and benevolence is something else.
Contrary to the film starring Sandra Bullock, in which we were able to discern a more archetypal and linear narrative, this particular apocalypse, now seen in Barcelona and signed from the perspective of the brothers Álex and David Pastor, offers us a disconcerting collection of script twists that do not wait and that will make us see from the beginning, the new and ambitious magnitude to which it has been tried to take the material that was raised in its day in “Blindly” (18). On this occasion, the role of Bullock is replaced by a limited and insufficient Mario Casas in the shoes of Sebastián, who will have to face one of his most adult roles and the responsibility of carrying on his shoulders the absolute leading role in a plot that it will reveal its nature through flashback and time jump.
Although it seeks to decorate it with CGI drips with which to sketch elaborate emblematic landscapes of a Barcelona buried in chaos and barbarism or offer us new subjective shots of those supposed creatures that we should not look at, the successful form will not solve the omission background. And so it is manifested in an objective mismanagement of its textual resources, which will make us lose the thread and keep in mind the suspicion that other characters (with more charisma and desire to contribute something new to the plot) are completely wasted in favor of to give a greater share to certain repetitive, over-explained or simply lacking attraction for the public plot threads (in 2018, talking about the apocalypse still sounded innovative; in 2023, it is an indifferent and hackneyed topic with little capacity to catch). Among these potential lines that remain at half throttle, we find the shift towards religious imagery and this dosed approach to the existence of a sect of “seers” who force others to open their eyes (directed by Father Esteban, read in mouth of Leonardo Sbaraglia); a framework that was slightly intuited in its past installment and that now, with only slight suggestions throughout the footage, will make us imagine an alternative plot that could have worked, but which sadly falls back into the forgettable background.
Perhaps subservient to the ABCs of Josh Malerman’s homonymous novel that is the basis for this kind of spin-off, the Pastors end up giving us a redundant arc that sometimes tries to go beyond Susanne Bier’s film, but at the same time shows us that for This trip did not require so many saddlebags and that less is always more (this is how we verified it, for example, with that extensive collection of secondaries, riddled with clichés, which are distracting and not convincing). We understand, then, that the objective was not so much to surpass its predecessor as to expand its environment; but unfortunately, in this task we also see them err, since the water ends up flowing at the same point that the original does: that sort of sanctuary that serves as a stage for an attempt at effective emotion that will not reach us completely. the same way, since the viewer has not had time to develop a sufficient level of empathy with their respective protagonists. Of course, with an added novelty that leaves, without a doubt, the door open to a more than possible continuation, for those who have the rennet to pick up the baton.