Film Review | Netflix

The Platform 2 (2024) — more blood, more action, a few scraps of coherence

The inmates of a strange vertical prison try to organise themselves for survival, but in-fighting soon erupts.

One of the greatest last lines in English literature comes from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” And it’s hard not to think of this moment — when the ostensible freedom fighters are fully confirmed as having become oppressors themselves — at several points in Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform 2/El Hoyo 2, a follow-up to his hugely successful feature debut for Netflix, The Platform (2019).

Several writers have suggested that The Platform 2 is a prequel, not a sequel, which may make some sense. After all, the one major character who appears extensively in both films — Trimagasi (the consistently scene-stealing Zorion Eguileor) — dies in the first. However, expecting everything to stack up neatly with these movies may be a mistake, and it’s…