“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

As you settle into this Spanish-language movie with echoes of Cube (1997), you can’t help but sit mesmerized at not only the situation unfolding in front of you but all of the implications of how the characters deal with their situation and the metaphors for the current state of the world.

The main character, Goreng, wakes inside of a concrete room where the only way in or out is a large hole in the center of the room. There are potentially many levels to the structure and each level holds two people at a time. Every day a platform descends from the top level filled with food. Each level gets a chance to eat from the platform for a short amount of time, but the gluttonous top levels leave nothing for the lower levels.

Seems easy enough until it is not and it gets real rough with a lot of death and mutilations. I think the cannibalism was the hardest to swallow. Ultimately, the violence and mayhem was for a clear purpose: to show the brutality of humanity when people at higher economic levels hoard the resources for themselves.

Rarely do horror movies both enthrall and provoke deep thinking through allegory. The Platform manages to do it all with heavy dosages of blood, a smidge of comedy, and a satisfying ending.

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