Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Platform’ on Netflix, a Gruesome and Gross Metaphor for Capitalism at its Worst

The Platform nabbed the People’s Choice Award for Midnight Madness at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, which helped land it an international streaming deal with Netflix. So now that we’re sequestered in our homes, avoiding COVID-19 contamination by cuddling up with our favorite streaming services, we can fire up this Spanish movie and sup heavily on its barely veiled METAPHORS for all the most horrible components of capitalism, socialism, individualism and collectivism. If you decide to hit play on this movie, which really puts the GORY in ALLEGORY, let it be known that the only place to find less escapism is on CNN or in the Wal Mart toilet paper aisle.

THE PLATFORM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Our protagonist Goreng (Ivan Massague) is trapped in a Concept: A vertical prison consisting of an unknown number of levels, two prisoners per level. There’s a big rectangular hole in the middle of the floor, dropping down, down, down through all the levels. Once a day, a floating slab full of fancy-ass food lowers itself to each level, stops for a few minutes so the prisoners can snarf and gobble, then lowers to the next. There’s enough food for everyone, but humans being humans, those at the top feast hard and heavy and those at the bottom fight over crumbs and bones and other spittle-flecked leavings.

Officially, the place is the Vertical Self-Management Center. Unofficially, it’s The Pit. After 30 days, prisoners are shuffled to a different floor with a new cellmate, so Goreng has an opportunity to explore all your worst roommate-from-hell nightmares. This is all explained to Goreng by his first cellmate, an older, well-groomed not-so-gentleman named Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor). They’re on level 48 — not terrible, but not great either, because by the time the smorgasbord gets to them, there’s lots of teeth marks on the turkey legs, and possibly a butt print on the bundt cake. Oh, and occasionally, people chuck themselves down the hole to die. Or maybe they were pushed? Can’t tell. But death is on the menu with all the tortes and steamed lobster.

How’d Goreng and Trimagasi end up in The Pit? In whatever unexplained hellhole future dystopia this is, you can volunteer to serve time in exchange for a diploma, which makes sense, because you can’t say that all the horrible crap that happens in there isn’t educational on one level or another. That’s what Goreng did; he also wants to quit smoking. Trimagasi blindly chucked a TV out his window and killed a passerby, an illegal immigrant “that shouldn’t have been there,” he sneers. Nice guy! Prisoners can bring one item — any item — with them. Goreng chose a copy of Don Quixote; Trimagasi chose a knife that sharpens itself on whatever it’s cutting. Goodness me, why would he bring such a thing? They get along smashingly at first, even sharing a buddy montage. But will it be followed by a sworn-enemies montage? END OF FIRST ACT.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pick an existential dystopia, any existential dystopia. The Platform is Cube crossed with the yucky bits and allegorical bits of Snowpiercer, with the almost-yuckiest bits of Saw tossed in. And lord help us all, there were moments that brought to mind, of all things, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Performance Worth Watching: Antonia San Juan turns up as one of Goreng’s cellmates, and is pretty much the only cast member who finds an iota of depth in their character.

Memorable Dialogue: Trimagasi’s METAPHOR: “There are three types of people — those at the top, those at the bottom and those who fall.”

Sex and Skin: Some random schlongs and butts; a PG-13 sexy-dream sequence; a woman shows off her chest and the supergross boils adorning it.

Our Take: DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN CONCEPT. The plot is the Concept; the Concept is the plot. The Concept is so complicated, it takes the whole movie to explain it. The Concept also has holes in it — holes about the size of the holes in every floor of The Pit.

Nothing gets in the way of The Platform absolutely positively achieving its goal, which is to bulldoze us with its METAPHORS for all the stuff that’s wrong with modern society. It isn’t the movie’s fault that real-life lunacy — specifically, toilet paper hoarding during a global pandemic — dilutes its Sartre-derivative point about hell being other people. But the movie is as subtle as the punchlines in Ow! My Balls!, especially when the METAPHOR it deploys for people feeding on each other’s vulnerabilities is literal cannibalism. (Is that a spoiler? If you don’t smell it coming, then congratulations on watching your first movie!)

The movie is also excessively, pointlessly gross. It’s essentially a wannabe smartypants quasi-philosophical puzzle film spiced with increasingly repugnant scenes calculated to draw in the horror crowd. Characters are an afterthought, so emotional involvement is a nonfactor, lagging far behind the execution of the Concept. Do not look the Concept in the eye. Please remove all the brown M&Ms from the Concept’s craft services table. The movie is full of go-nowhere symbolism — images of snails, snatches of Don Quixote, a dog named Ramesses II, etc. — filleted viscera and literal fecal matter. And come the final moments, the METAPHORS become so vague, the movie ceases making sense.

Our Call: SKIP IT. We get it. People are brutal and selfish and ugly and capable of nasty, nasty stuff. Except maybe that one guy.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Platform on Netflix