The Platform

Plot

A man named Goreng awakens in a cell numbered 48. His cellmate Trimagasi explains that they are in a tower-style holding facility. Once per day, food arrives on "the platform" that lowers from level 0, stopping for two minutes on each level. Prisoners can eat only while the platform is stopped on their level, and are subjected to fatal temperatures if they keep any food. Prisoners are randomly reassigned to a new level each month. Trimagasi reveals that when assigned to level 132, he and his former cellmate cannibalized someone. One day, a woman named Miharu rides down the platform, whom Trimagasi explains regularly descends the pit to search for her child. Goreng explains that he volunteered to spend six months in the facility in exchange for a diploma, while Trimagasi confides that he is serving a year-long sentence for manslaughter.

The following month, they are reassigned to level 171. Trimagasi ties up Goreng and explains his plans to feed himself using Goreng's flesh. When he begins cutting into Goreng's leg, Miharu arrives, attacks Trimagasi, and frees Goreng, who kills Trimagasi. Encouraged by Miharu, Goreng eats Trimagasi's flesh and subsequently becomes haunted by hallucinations of Trimagasi.

The next month, Goreng wakes on level 33 with a woman named Imoguiri and her dog, Ramesses II. Imoguiri was the administration official who interviewed Goreng before sending him to the pit, having admitted herself after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Imoguiri only eats every other day, letting Ramesses II eat on the days that she does not, and tries unsuccessfully to convince the pair below them to ration their food. One day, Miharu arrives injured. Goreng and Imoguiri nurse her back to health. That night, Goreng breaks up a fight between Miharu and Imoguiri to then discover that Miharu has killed Ramesses II. After Miharu leaves, Goreng mentions her child to Imoguiri, who says there are no children in the pit and Miharu came alone. The following morning, Goreng wakes to find that they have been reassigned to level 202 and that Imoguiri has hanged herself. He consumes her flesh, plagued with hallucinations of his former cellmates.

The next month, Goreng is assigned to level 6. His new cellmate, Baharat, is a religious man who has been attempting to escape the pit for months. Estimating that there are 250 levels, Goreng convinces Baharat to ride the platform down with him and ration the food. They forbid anyone on the first fifty levels to receive any, arguing that they get to eat every day, and fend off those who defy them. Fellow prisoner Sr. Brambang advises them that civility is more effective than violence and convinces them to send a symbolic message to the administration by leaving a single panna cotta untouched.

Cast

Iván Massagué as Goreng

Zorion Eguileor as Trimagasi

Antonia San Juan as Imoguiri

Emilio Buale as Baharat

Alexandra Masangkay as Miharu

Zihara Llana as Mali (Miharu’s daughter)

Eric L. Goode as Sr. Brambang

Mario Pardo as Baharat's friend

Txubio Fernández de Jáuregui as Chef

Production

The film was produced by Basque Films alongside Mr. Miyagi Films and Plataforma la película AIE, with the participation of RTVE and ETB and support from ICAA, the Basque administration, and ICO. Shooting lasted for six weeks.

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia says the film's key message is that "humanity will have to move towards the fair distribution of wealth", exploring the importance of individual initiative in driving political change. The screenplay is adapted from a theatre script by David Desola and Pedro Rivero, to which more action and physical elements were added to make it more suitable for a film. "Extensive" rewriting was required to convert the unproduced theater script into a screenplay. The director said it was a "torturous ordeal", as the writers defended their artistic vision and did not want some of the changes to be made.

The concrete prison cells were built for the production in a Red Cross facility in a port in Bilbao. The director asked for cells that looked "economical, robust, [and] impregnable", which emphasized a sense of architectural and engineering proportion. Only two tiers of concrete cells were built; the appearance of many tiers of cells extending above and below each cell (visible from the hole in the center of each cell) was added in post-production using visual effects. The director says the vertical tower of cells "represents the dehumanized coldness of the Vertical Self-Management Center".

The director states that the film's lavish "food was treated as another character in the story, one that is aesthetically antagonistic to the architecture of the prison." The luxurious displays of gourmet food were presented on "Versailles worthy tableware" to depict "excessive, almost erotic, opulent desire" that is eventually "desecrated" once the near-empty platform reaches the abject, starving inmates on the lower levels.

The director acknowledges the film can be difficult to watch, but he says the purpose of this approach is to generate discussion and debate by viewers about the political messages. When asked about the film's brutal violence and cannibalism, the director explained that the prison "is a reflection of our society, [so] it couldn’t hide the violence. It had to show how we rip each other apart."

Release

The film was released in Spain on 8 November 2019 by Festival Films. The Platform was released onto Netflix internationally (including Spain) on 20 March 2020. In July 2020, Netflix revealed the film had been watched by 56 million households over its first four weeks of release, among the highest viewing figures ever for one of their original films.

Reception

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 81% based on 97 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "While it may feel muddled at times, The Platform is an inventive and captivating dystopian thriller." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Norman Wilner of Now correctly predicted that the film would win the People's Choice Award, giving it a five-N rating and writing that the film "has everything: low comedy, political allegory, left-field twists, crowd-pleasing surprises, spectacular violence, sadism, altruism, and yet more spectacular violence, all wrapped up in a high-concept horror film that moves the premise of Cube into a merciless vertical structure. It’s grotesque and compelling, like grindhouse Buñuel. And it never blinks."

Amy Nicholson of Variety wrote that "the film’s minimalist fury feels like the plays of Samuel Beckett. Massagué and Eguileor are up to being in a zesty Waiting for Godot. And Eguileor's nasty, delightful, occasionally tender performance feels like an audition to play a Bond villain, or perhaps the Spanish resurrection of Hannibal Lecter."

The film garnered new reviews after a surge in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sam Jones in The Guardian suggested it was "the perfect parable for life in the time of the coronavirus and a visceral investigation of how a crisis can expose not only the stratification of human society but also the immutable strands of selfishness coded into our DNA."

Prequel

Discussions around a potential sequel took place after the film's streaming success in 2020. In May 2023, Netflix reported the beginning of filming of The Platform 2, with Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia returning as director and starring Hovik Keuchkerian and Milena Smit. In July 2024, Netflix released the first trailer for the film and the movie was released on October 4, 2024.