Reviews
‘Bird Box Barcelona’ Review: Ay, Mis Ojos
Despite 2018’s Bird Box (based on the Josh Malerman novel of the same name) becoming the most-watched movie in the history of Netflix at the time it premiered (according to Netflix, anyway), it took five years to even hear a peep of a potential franchise. Well, that egg has finally hatched and what has come out is the spinoff Bird Box Barcelona, which shares a premise, some producers, and exactly one stunt performer with the original Bird Box and nothing else.
The movie takes place in Spain (the home of the hit series Money Heist and Elite, so Netflix knows they can score some international crossover points; presumably, if Spain has said no, this movie would have been shot in South Korea and nowhere else). Just like the America of Bird Box, Spain has been ravaged by the arrival of unseen creatures who, when gazed upon, drive humans into a self-destructive fugue state. This time we’re following grief-stricken Barcelona local Sebastián (Mario Casas) as he meets up with a band of survivors including English psychiatrist Claire (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell), immigrant physicist/pizza boy Octavio (Babylon’s Diego Calva), and a young German girl named Sofia (Naila Schuberth).
How Does Bird Box Barcelona Compare to the Original?
Right off the bat, we learn that Bird Box Barcelona has very different intentions than Bird Box. While the original movie was a Romero-esque “humans are the real monsters” post-apocalypse story with an “elevated” motherhood angle, Barcelona swaps out motherhood for grief and is mostly interested in being a Catholic crisis of faith picture. This is more fitting than it sounds, considering the way that the monsters occupy a liminal space that allows humans to apply their own understanding to them. So, if you’re a Spanish Catholic, then, well, there you go.
Unfortunately, the other main thing Bird Box Barcelona takes from the original is its out-of-order storytelling. This one relies on flashbacks rather than flashforwards, which get in the way of the tension of the main narrative less, but they get so far out of the way that they are finished delivering any sort of useful information about a third of the way through the movie.
Other than that, Barcelona is ever so slightly gorier (one death in particular is a doozy) and quite a bit less scary than Bird Box. In fact, genuine horror doesn’t even seem to be one of the major tones the movie is going for most of the time. There is also a very different tenor to the main character’s journey this time around that does add texture to the first two acts, even if at the end of the day it’s still pretty much taking the shape of the arc we already saw Sandra Bullock’s Malorie play out in Bird Box.
Should You Watch Bird Box Barcelona?
Because of its overall disinterest in horror, Bird Box Barcelona does veer dangerously close to not actually being interesting to watch whatsoever. It loses even more of its potency by conspicuously ditching most of the parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic that the original movie had in spades (entirely by accident, of course, but it worked because of its universal sense of apocalyptic dread). It only pays lip service to certain COVID-y aspects in very brief moments. It makes sense why Barcelona would want to avoid reminding viewers of the 2020 lockdowns, but in doing so it sands off almost every edge it could have had.
However, the movie does have its moments. A setpiece in a subway tunnel is superbly directed and one particular sequence in the third act climax will have you gnawing your fingernails down to the bone. The acting is all perfectly serviceable without any particular standouts. And there is at least a sense that somebodywanted the movie to be pleasant to look at, with recurring eyeball motifs, the introduction of cool-looking blacked-out goggles in addition to blindfolds, and a strong sense of when to highlight a space with strips of golden light or huge swaths of inky shadow.
Ultimately, Bird Box Barcelona is the platonic ideal of a Netflix movie. It’s never going to knock your socks off, but it delivers a story you can hang onto just enough that you won’t click back to your home page and waste 30 minutes trying to figure out what streaming service Jury Duty is on.
Score: 6/10
Luz: The Flower of Evil is a movie simultaneously charged with and mired in ambition. It’s genuinely comical how overly ambitious of a first-time film it is for writer-director Juan Diego Escobar Alzate: a microbudget, shot on location in the mountains of Colombia, character driven psychological horror film meant to explore the very nature of good and evil while also tackling cults and misogyny.
So, it’s shocking how much of it works. Not all of it works, not at all, but it is cohesive enough to serve as a surprising experience with the colorful aesthetic it employs and incredibly dark places it goes to.
What Is Luz: Flower of Evil About?
After the death of their mother Luz, three sisters in a rural cult community find their faith waning. The three are the centerpiece of an elaborate theology crafted by their cult leader father, a man who is becoming more difficult to deal with by the day. So, when he brings a mute boy into town, chaining him up and claiming he’s the people’s messiah, an already tense situation devolves into outright madness. What ensues is the slow dissolution of the cult, and the torturous end of an already fractured family.
Let this usual synopsis section also serve as a content warning: the film does depict sexual violence very early on, about 25 minutes into the film. It’s not Irreversible levels of horrifically long, but it’s also not particularly brief and still graphic content by its nature. It can be difficult to stomach, so I’m mentioning it now for those who would rather avoid that sort of thing.
A Ponderous Arthouse Folk Horror About Good and Evil
The film has shocking moments, but it’s not very interested in shock value. This is first and foremost a slow burn, a piece of arthouse folk horror that is more about bleeding out than it is about a violent demise. The most obvious comparisons are to The VVitch and Midsommar, but even that feels like an inappropriate mix, even when it leans towards Aster’s commercial darling or Egger’s colonial nightmare.
Fundamentally, Luz is a study about people who mythologize suffering and cruelty and excuse it as being driven by outside spiritual forces rather than their own decisions. It’s about deconstructing harmful religious and cult mentalities, and it wears its philosophy on its sleeve (aggressively so). Alzate creates a visually and textually fascinating meltdown of his characters and the community they find themselves within.
I would say it’s a “descent into madness” if it didn’t feel clear that the characters were already in a tailspin right at the film’s outset. The script, especially through its second act, starts to feel repetitive and a little simplistic, with a somewhat anticlimactic ending and dialog that starts to feel less naturalistic and more tedious. But it’s an interesting dissection of a family, even if it’s rough around the edges.
Hyperreal Sense of Color, But Shaky Directing and Writing
The film’s most obvious and striking feature is its hyperrealist palette, bearing a rich Technicolor aspect that permeates throughout the entire runtime. Colorist Felipe Martinez U paints the mountainous countryside with such vibrancy, a simple but very effective contrast to the dying days of a cult the story centers on; bleak, muddy times, punctuated by vibrant nature all around. Aesthetically, it’s pretty clearly visually inspired by the early works of Pedro Almodóvar and the visual warmth of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man.
Even the naturalistic tendencies of Terrence Malick make an appearance here, though how much of that is just in the gorgeous location scouting and how much is actually emulated by Alzate is up for debate. All around, the film lacks polish. The camerawork is amateurish in some ways, slightly cramped and occasionally uninspired in its framing. Sometimes the oversaturated look of the film can feel a little saccharine and heavy, but the pop of color here feels purposeful enough that I can forgive it as being highly stylized rather than trying to mask the weak points of a first-time director.
Is Luz: The Flower of Evil Worth the Watch?
In the search for great Latin American horror, Luz was an odd duck to stumble upon to be certain. But I’m a champion of strange birds with a lot of character, so you do the math.
Luz: The Flower of Evil is a struggle of a film, hard to watch at points despite how visually appealing it can be. It’s a brutal, bleak piece of psychological folk horror that certainly has a thin audience and will test the patience of even those the premise appeals to. But it does have as much substance as it does style, even when it treads into murky waters, and for that I think it’s worth the watch.
If you’re not watching Indonesian horror, you’re missing out. The region is producing some of the craziest genre movies around right now, thanks in no small part to the efforts of writer-director Joko Anwar. His latest, Ghost in the Cell, which celebrated its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026, combines everything we love about the filmmaker’s work—supernatural scares, inventive kills, and gnarly gore—along with a strong vein of comedy and political satire.
What is Ghost in the Cell About?
Ghost in the Cell centers around Dimas (Endy Arfian), a journalist whose life falls apart after he tries to run a story on corporate corruption and mysterious worker deaths. Wrongfully convicted of the horrific murder of his boss, Dimas finds himself with a one-way ticket to Cell Block C, where he quickly meets a colorful cast of prisoners—the good, the bad, and the seriously nasty. Among the good guys, there’s Anggoro (Abimana Aryasatya), who is constantly getting into trouble for defending fellow inmates, and Six (Yoga Pratama), who claims he can see people’s auras.
As if Dimas’ situation couldn’t get any worse, his arrival seems to trigger a series of brutal killings in the prison. Bodies are showing up mangled beyond recognition and displayed in positions that wouldn’t look out of place in Hannibal. It soon becomes clear that Dimas isn’t behind the murders, which begs the question: what did he bring in with him?
Anwar Embraces Horror-Comedy Whole-Heartedly
Prison is a scary place, and Anwar makes great use of the setting, with the action moving from the dingy showers where predators lurk to the bleak cellblock where inmates are at the mercy of their captors and the cafeteria where rival gangs eye each other up with ill intent.
But for all the human misery contained within the film, Ghost in the Cell is ultimately a horror-comedy, one that isn’t afraid to lean into broad slapstick and quippy dialogue when it wants to raise a chuckle. The tonal shifts can take a little while to adjust to, especially if your previous experience with Anwar comes from his more serious horror outings like Impetigore. This might be a problem if the film wasn’t actually funny, but Ghost in the Cell has enough laugh-out-loud moments to make you forget about any whiplash.
Ghost in the Cell Is a Genre-Bender to the Max
Comedy isn’t the only new flavor that Anwar has tossed into the mix. In Ghost in the Cell, dance sequences and martial-arts fight choreo sit side-by-side with some of the most extreme gore scenes seen outside a Terrifier movie in recent years. Then there’s the eerie way the spirit presents before it kills (trypophobia sufferers, beware) and the extensive critique of political corruption, power, and inequality. It’s an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that shouldn’t work on paper, but under Anwar’s assured hand, it does.
It helps that for all the slapstick, the film lands a surprisingly earnest message, amplified by its vast ensemble cast. Dimas and Anggoro at times feel like main characters, but everyone in Ghost in the Cell has a big part to play, and that’s the point: in seemingly impossible circumstances, there’s strength in unity.
Ghost in the Cell Is an Endlessly Entertaining Blend of Goofiness, Heart, and Gore
If you’re looking for nonstop scares, you won’t find them in Ghost in the Cell. What you will find is a delightful blend of horror, comedy, and action that is apt to leave you grinning from ear to ear.
The film doesn’t skimp on the gore, throwing flesh and fluids at every surface. But it’s also charmingly goofy, with a cast that doesn’t take itself too seriously and a script that’s all too happy to devolve into a comedic dance scene when it feels like the spirit might strike. In every sense, Anwar is doing the most, and the end result is a film where there’s nary a dull moment in sight.
