We’ll do the tally for you: No Sandra Bullock, just some birds (and never in packing containers), loads of blindfolds, and the singular need to make audiences (additional) detest humanity. Such is the film math at play in David Pastor and Àlex Pastor’s “Bird Box Barcelona,” a continuation (if not a real sequel) to the 2018 smash Netflix hit “Bird Box.” Whereas Susanne Bier’s post-apocalyptic drama featured, sure, loads of Sandra Bullock and birds (in packing containers), it additionally carried with it an affection for the higher facet of humanity. On the very least, the thriller made the case that some individuals need to be saved, particularly in the event that they must bear insane and intense trials to get there. The Pastors’ companion function, co-written with “Chicken Field” novelist Josh Malerman, has zero room for such niceties.
Like many post-lockdown options, “Chicken Field Barcelona” leans exhausting into its well timed! components, together with a hefty throughline concerning the nefarious energy of misinformation, the way in which trauma distorts our brains, and the way tough it may be to positively evolve within the face of upheaval. Which means ascribing an incredible quantity of — finally, perhaps not even actual? — backstory to the nightmarish entity that has destroyed humanity, together with the place it got here from and what it desires from us. Whereas the primary film acknowledged that the ability of what we don’t know makes for a significantly better time on the films, “Chicken Field Barcelona” is consumed with explaining every thing, even when remaining revelations appear intent on unstitching all that new data.
It begins with the acquainted: A father (Mario Casas) and his younger daughter (Alejandra Howard) set out for a spin round an deserted curler rink. Her eyes clamped shut, Anna asks the perpetual query to her cautious dad Sebastian: “Can I open my eyes now?” And she will be able to, as a result of Sebastian has ensured that nobody else is with them, no different individuals, no evil entities, and thus he and his solely remaining beloved one may have the ability to get pleasure from a spot of enjoyable. No matter horrible occasion delivered to Earth the unseen baddies of the “Chicken Field” franchise — invisible specters that, when seen head-on, do one thing so terrible that it evokes the individuals who see them to immediately, violently kill themselves — occurred awhile in the past however Sebastian and Anna have tailored. Type of.
After their transient, be-wheeled foray, the pair set out right into a ruined Barcelona, the place they’re virtually immediately accosted by a trio of blind (!) thieves who take their scant meals and run off, leaving a bloody Sebastian struggling to maintain it collectively. However Sebastian has a plan — one we quickly uncover he’s utilized many instances since this explicit pandemic unfolded — and it requires discovering “good individuals” to help him and a hidden Anna. However what if Sebastian himself is just not particular person?
Followers of the primary movie will probably thrill on the world the Pastors plunge us into, together with a sequence of spectacular overhead photographs that showcase ruined cityscapes, from damaged highways to crashed jet planes, a seaside plagued by our bodies, a avenue plagued by our bodies, sides of buildings plagued by our bodies (you get it). Much less efficient is a hammy flashback that takes us 9 months earlier, when a then-clean-cut Sebastian was simply making an attempt to get by a seemingly regular day earlier than your complete world went to hell. The flashback supplies loads of context as to why Sebastian has began infiltrating varied teams of “good individuals,” not all the time with the very best of intentions, however even that backstory does little to make us empathize with him.
Possibly that’s simply how issues are going to be to any extent further. Possibly we’ve seen sufficient unhealthy conduct, nefarious misinformation, and egocentric attitudes IRL to suck away our capability to offer in to them on the large display screen. Sure, Sebastian has suffered, however so has everybody else within the fictitious world of “Chicken Field,” and as his chilling plans proceed to unfold, they don’t make for thrilling leisure, they only make for feel-bad content material, the type of stuff which may encourage you to yell at your TV earlier than simply going forward and shutting it off.
Even for individuals who keep it up, the twists and turns and new guidelines the Pastors and Malerman try to put out for Sebastian and the many individuals (together with a really underused Diego Calva and Georgina Campbell) he meets alongside the way in which fail to make a lot sense. The choice to “see” how the entities see provides nothing, swapping canines for birds is simply one other manner so as to add extra heartbreaking gore to the function, and the faux-religious angle that overtakes its narrative (and, it appears, Sebastian himself) is paper-thin.
“Chicken Field” labored as a result of it discovered the phobia within the unknown, whereas its first follow-up is compelled to pile on reply after reply, even when they’re finally unfaithful, even when they’re largely flimsy, even when they go away audiences really praying for the top of humanity (or not less than this pressure of filmmaking about them). By the point a chicken seems — in a field, as well! — “Chicken Field Barcelona” has strayed so removed from what made the primary movie fascinating, scary, and sure, well timed! that it stays however a distant reminiscence, as if somebody pulled a blindfold over our collective cinematic reminiscence, for no actual motive in any respect, with no solutions to ever be discovered.
Grade: C-
“Chicken Field Barcelona” begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, July 14.
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