The sci-fi thriller Bird Box Barcelona has been available on Netflix since Friday. The film plays alongside the 2018 Sandra Bullock film Bird Box, which is also available on Netflix. Spoilers follow for the full story of Bird Box Barcelona.
The plot of the spin-off is a bit more complex than in the fairly straightforward predecessor. In this article we explain them different forms of monsters as well as that open end.
The plot of Bird Box Barcelona and the twist briefly explained
Bird Box Barcelona starts expectedly. The father and former engineer Sebastián (Mario Casas) roams through deserted Barcelona with his daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard). Some kind of invasion destroyed civilization. The monsters drive people to instant suicide on contact. Therefore, the survivors wear blindfolds or other visual protection on open roads and in threatening situations. We are in a so far normal, post-apocalyptic situation.
Then comes the twist: The supposed protagonist Sebastián is under the influence of the monsters. His mission: deliver as many people as possible to the monsters. The story suddenly turns upside down. And it gets even more complicated.
Bird Box Barcelona – Trailer 2 (Spanish)
What is the difference between the monsters and the seers in Bird Box Barcelona?
What are seers? Sebastián didn’t kill himself at the sight of the monsters like most of the rest of humanity. At contact, the encounter led to a kind of assimilation: he becomes part of the threat and becomes a so-called seer. Sebastián worms his way into the trust of other survivors, only to later expose them to the monsters. However, he does not know what exactly he is doing. The monsters fool him into believing that he would harm people with his actions “redeem”. He considers them to be angels and the apocalypse to be sent by God.
In order to manipulate him and other people in this way, the monsters take on the forms of people close to the seers in their minds. In Sebastián’s case, this is his dead daughter Anna. After her death, Anna appears in the film as a ghost or vision that motivates Sebastián to do what he does.
How do the monsters work? Just like in the predecessor Bird Box, the deadly creatures do not appear physically in the film. We experience the world through their perspective for brief moments, which means they have to have some kind of physical form. The film announces their presence when gravity breaks in a scene.
Despite everything, the humans manage to catch one of the monsters, as the finale shows. More on that in the next section.
What does the experiment at the end of Bird Box Barcelona mean?
In the final minutes of the film, we learn that part of the rest of humanity has organized itself in Barcelona and has successfully sealed itself off from the monsters. Claire (Georgina Campbell) is being interrogated by a doctor who is looking for some sort of vaccine against the effects of the beings. The seers are classified as immune to the monsters – their DNA would be the “Key to Immunity” and thus in the fight against the invasion.
The last scene of Bird Box Barcelona shows a experiment looking for that remedy. Three rats are provided with “seer preparations”. In a locked chamber, the animals are exposed to one of the monsters. The goal: You should survive longer than a minute. The experiment fails. All three rats die at the same time after a few moments.
The film postpones the search for a cure to a possible further Bird Box part.
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