The Platform was one of Netflix’s very popular original movies in 2020. It followed a tower-style prison facility where food is served once a day to inmates, with prisoners in the top cell getting the most food while those on lower levels get less and less the further down they are. Now, The Platform 2 has been released, and while it isn’t exactly faring well with critics, viewers seem to be here for the 2024 Netflix release.
One of Netflix’s best thrillers, The Platform, really broke big a couple of years ago. It may have been a very weird movie to stream due to its premise involving prison inmates anomalistically eating scraps, but its Darwinian message about poverty spoke volumes. Showing what might happen when there are limited resources that are unequally shared, the Spanish dystopian thriller introduced themes of trying to survive under extreme conditions, and both critics and viewers were fascinated by it. To prove that, over on Rotten Tomatoes the Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s movie achieved 81% from critics and 73% from audiences.
Four years after The Platform was watched by over 56 million households in four weeks by July 2020, a sequel came out on October 4th. The plot follows a new prisoner revolting against the mysterious master’s food distribution system. While that sounds interesting, the film has received bad reviews.
Unfortunately, according to ComicBook, The Platform 2 hasn’t reached the same success as the previous film. Its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating is 42% with many saying it's a rehash of the first movie that doesn't add anything new. The audience score wasn’t any better. It sits at 26% with numerous reactions saying the sequel was lost in its message.
Even though critics and audiences weren’t blown away by The Platform 2, it doesn’t mean that Netflix subscribers have stopped watching it. According to Netflix’s Global Top 10 of non-English films, the sequel sits comfortably at #1 with 32,600,000 hours watched and 19,400,000 views. The new sci-fi movie has been out for less than half the time of the other eligible titles, yet it received a higher viewership. It’ll be interesting to see how many more weeks the Netflix sequel keeps it up.
With the high viewerships of The Platform movies, I’m curious if there will be a third one eventually. In an interview with Kinótico (via MovieWeb) director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia said it would depend on the success of the second film. He said if his franchise were to continue, he’d like to explore more questions regarding the Pit including the “who, where, when, and why the Pit was built.” While Netflix hasn’t given a third movie the greenlight yet, maybe the views will be enough for the streaming service to consider it.
The Platform’s second serving may not have been satisfactory among critics and audiences, but the numbers for the sequel are still skyrocketing. Clearly, negative word-of-mouth isn’t stopping subscribers from giving this new movie a chance.
To see what all this chatter is about, you can stream The Platform 2 with a Netflix subscription.
