The Last of Us made Netflix’s Bird Box Barcelona miss its window

Like a horror movie, Netflix’s Bird Box spinoff Birdhouse Barcelona faces stiff competition for its specific niche. While the original Bird Boxmaking Sandra Bullock a bona fide Netflix star, may even have benefited from a later drop in the same year as the remarkably similar hit The quiet place, Birdhouse Barcelona comes five years later after a spate of horror stories with a similar dynamic – The last of us chief among them. And while the new movie the world of Bird Box in some small but intriguing ways, it’s hard to look at it without hearing the echoes of all the other recent stories where a beleaguered father-type tries to protect a preteen in a post-apocalyptic world filled with lowly but very deadly monsters.

Birdhouse Barcelona takes place at about the same time Bird Box, but follows what happens in Europe when mysterious monsters arrive and society collapses. (It also leaves all Bird Box characters behind, and has nothing to do with Maloriethe sequel to the Josh Malerman’s horror novel that the first film adapts.) As in Bird Box, a spate of sudden violent suicides heralds the arrival of creatures most people can’t face – a glimpse of them triggers psychosis and, for most people, instant self-destruction. (Like it Bird Boxtakes the new movie the very sensible approach to keep those creatures completely out of the picture.) Survivors, including the widowed engineer and father Sebastián (Mario Casas), wear blindfolds or obscured goggles when they have to go out to forage in the nearly deserted town.

And like Bird Box, the new movie takes a lot of fear out of the specter of people dealing with unknowable monsters while blind, and a lot of horror out of the inventive, grotesque ways they kill themselves when they see one of the creatures. As Sebastián and his daughter Anna (Alejandra Howard) wander through the wreckage of Barcelona, ​​the people they meet are suspicious, tense and sometimes downright violent.

Like it The last of uslike the first Quiet placelike it Sweet tooth or The route or parts of Station Eleven And The living Deadeven nice The Mandalorian, Birdhouse Barcelona focuses heavily on the emotions of a father figure who struggles to be responsible and capable under extraordinary circumstances that repeatedly threaten a young charge. The dynamics in this movie start to feel very familiar, especially when the movie itself revolves around the same events happening over and over again: characters fleeing the creatures, are exposed to them anyway, and die in grotesque ways.

Birdhouse Barcelona adds a few new major wrinkles to the original film’s formula. Screenwriters David and Àlex Pastor strongly imply that the monsters (described by various characters as angels, aliens, or something else entirely) are actively evil and capable of tricking the human mind, and that they are somehow invested in the question of whether people die. The new film also spends more time than Bird Box about exploring “Seers”, the relatively rare humans who react not with suicide to the sight of the creatures, but by becoming obsessed with looking at them – forcing every other survivor they encounter to look at them too, regardless how many die.

They all leave Birdhouse Barcelona with a message that is also known from many post-apocalyptic stories: maybe humanity is the real monster. And perhaps, the film suggests, not being able to trust other people is just as frightening and tragic as not being able to trust your own eyes.

Casas’ performance as Sebastián is well-structured, and it’s easy to accept his frustration as he navigates an unsafe world with a daughter he loves. Yet everything that happens has a ‘been here, done this’ character Birdhouse Barcelona that’s not just because of the way it echoes the original Bird Box. That movie has a lot more of a sense of discovery and mystery. As the protective parent trying to protect her children, Malorie (Sandra Bullock) came up with some unusual quirks, as a woman so determined not to have unrealistic expectations about her children’s survival that she refused to name them. Sebastián has his own big wrinkle driving the film’s drama, but it still doesn’t give him much of an advantage in a sea of ​​similar characters.

Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO

Considering how much space The last of us had to tell his story, given the expansive palette of an entire TV season to develop his grieving father figure Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his complicated relationship with his spiky daughter figure Ellie (Bella Ramsey), it’s no surprise that the show has a more compelling and memorable job with similar characters and emotions. The last of us also has other advantages: the unseen Bird Box monsters are mysterious and unspeakable, but The last of usmushroom zombies are more visceral, more variable and creepier. Where The last of us had room to develop memorable side characters, Birdhouse Barcelona‘s supporting cast are mostly throwaway victims.

None of this may matter to fans of the original Bird Boxstill one of Netflix’s most viewed English original releases of all time. For people who just want to tell more stories in this world, and don’t mind leaving Bird Box‘s initial characters behind, the spin-off’s little mysteries and shocks could be enough to occupy a Friday night or a lazy Sunday afternoon.

But for people who want more depth from their sad father-found-family horror stories, The last of us is already out. Birdhouse Barcelona just feels a little late to the game.

Birdhouse Barcelona now streaming on Netflix.