The Platform (El Hoyo) graced us with a bleak and dystopian delight back in 2019. It served up brutal social commentary alongside prison horrors.
Essentially, it made starvation and societal collapse feel cinematic. Fast forward to The Platform 2, and they clearly decided to throw coherence out the window and see what sticks. They served us an overcrowded buffet of confusion. If The Platform was fine dining, The Platform 2 is an all-you-can-eat week-old leftovers banquet.
A Plot That Needs a GPS
Remember the original Platform, where you watched a man lose his mind, morals, and probably a few pounds while trying to survive a vertical prison? That was simple, right? Well, in the sequel, that simplicity is gone like last week’s soup. Instead, we’re thrust into a plot with more twists and turns than a soap opera. We get mysterious prison origins, convoluted conspiracies, and a parade of new characters that honestly could have used name tags.
Picture this: instead of sticking to a single brutal narrative, they thought, “Hey, let’s try five different plot lines at once!” It is as if the film was afraid we’d figure it out, so it doubled down on making everything as complicated as possible. Not sure what the main storyline is? Neither were the writers, apparently.
Character Development: Missing in Action
Goreng from the first movie was a man with a journey we could actually care about. The Platform 2 gives us a character roster that might as well have been written by an A.I. with a broken empathy chip. They could have made us root for someone or anyone, but instead, each character is about as relatable as a salad at a steakhouse. Relationships barely simmer, let alone boil, leaving the viewer as emotionally invested as they would be in a distant cousin’s third wedding.
Themes, Themes Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Sense
The original film knew what it was about: class struggle, human nature, and a whole lot of vertical misery. But The Platform 2 wants to be a little bit of everything. It tries to be a horror, a corporate exposé, and an environmental PSA. Honestly, at some point, I expected a subplot about recycling. Each new message is about as coherent as a toddler explaining the plot of Inception. The movie tries to say so much that it ends up saying absolutely nothing.
Symbolism on Steroids
One of the best things about The Platform was its straightforward and hard-hitting symbols. The platform goes down, food gets scarcer, and society crumbles. Easy enough. But the sequel ramps up the symbolism like it’s getting paid by the metaphor. Every scene, every object, and every minor plot twist seems desperate to be deep. Instead, it is just shallowly pretending. Imagine a Kafka novel rewritten by someone who just discovered social media hashtags: #society, #corporategreed, #prisonlife.
A Visual Mishmash with a Soundtrack That’s Trying Too Hard
At least the visuals haven’t completely lost the grunge factor. We still get a bit of that claustrophobic prison atmosphere. But what’s with the pacing? Scenes that should build up are rushing along as if they’re late for their own movie. The soundtrack feels less suspenseful and more overwhelming. There is enough melodramatic scoring here to make Phantom of the Opera look restrained.
An Ending That Wraps It All Up in the Worst Way Possible
The Platform left you with the haunting “What did I just watch?” feeling that kept you thinking for days. The Platform 2 just ends with a neat little bow on top, as if to say “Here you go, now stop asking questions.” This is ironic, given that by this point, no one has any idea what they just watched. The ending doesn’t inspire reflection. Instead, it feels like a forced wrap-up after someone’s hit the two-hour mark and gone “Alright, time’s up, everyone out.”
Final Thoughts
In the end, The Platform 2 had a clear recipe for success but decided to add every spice in the cupboard and hope for the best. If only they’d kept things simple, we might have had a sequel that matched the first film’s unsettling genius. Instead, it is a jumble of forced symbolism, character underdevelopment, and enough subplots to make a Netflix series out of a single movie.
The ultimate improvement is to scrap it and keep the original on repeat. Trust me, nothing beats the first course.
