If the recent successes of Roma and Parasite have opened your eyes to foreign cinema, then I would recommend hopping on to Netflix and giving Spanish film, The Platform a go. Admittedly, it doesn’t have the same star power or finesse that comes with the likes of Parasite but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an interesting watch.

The concept and execution is simple with the entire story focusing on the inside of a huge vertical prison tower (or pit) with over 200 floors. Each floor, or cell, consists of two prisoners and a giant hole in the floor that allows the platform to move between levels. The films starts in the busy kitchen on floor zero, where we see chefs preparing beautiful dishes and turning the platform into a banquet table before the sending it down to the floor below.

At each level, the prisoners can each as much food as they want before the platform lowers again. Down and down it goes until those on the lower levels are fighting for scraps or resorting to drastic measures in order to stay alive. After 30 days, they are drugged and wake up on a new level and the cycle begins again.

In principle, there is enough food to go around but in reality, the survival instinct kicks in and most of the food is gone by level 50. There is also an ugly undercurrent of entitlement scattered throughout, those who survived a triple digit level and wake up on one of the top floors feel as though they have earnt the right to gorge themselves silly. Given the current pandemic and the subsequent panic buying, The Platform feels strangely prophetic, an uncomfortable microscope on the ugly side of human nature.

What makes this film particularly intriguing is just how little we know about both the characters and the outside world. We learn that if the prisoners survive long enough to serve out their sentences, they are released into the world with all they need to succeed, but we don’t know how or why they are in there in the first place. The truth is that we don’t need to know who they were before, we learn all we need to about them by their actions and the choices they make.

The film is poorly dubbed in places, the acting isn’t particularly great if I’m honest and there is violence, aggression and desperation aplenty, this is not a film for everyone but there is no denying that it is a fascinating yet somewhat uncomfortable watch with dark themes and powerful messages. Check it out on Netflix now.