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You may not remember all the buzz around it, but The Platform is still available to stream on Netflix, and there’s still a good chance to find out what all the hype and debate were about. Not only that, but Netflix released a sequel film, The Platform 2, just last year. So if you jump into this acclaimed series, you’ll be good for a double-feature.
Netflix’s The Platform Explained
The Platform is a film by director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, from a script by David Desola and Pedro Rivero. It imagines a bleak world where a man named Goreng (Iván Massagué) awakens to find himself in a hellish prison facility. Prisoners are paired off and arranged by floor in a stacked tower, running down to an unknowable depth. Once a day, a platform packed with food starts to descend from the top of the prison to the bottom, stopping for only two minutes before continuing down. That seemingly simple process actually creates a brutal social order of class warfare, wherein the prisoners on the top floors can raid the best food, leaving less and less for those below; they never have to see. By the time the platform reaches the bottom, there’s only crumbs and scraps for those in the darkest depths, creating a nightmare horde of ravenous marauders on the lower levels. As an inmate on Level 48, Goreng finds himself literally in the middle of the struggle, and quickly learns that the societal order isn’t as clean and ordered as it seems. Factions are forming, and those below are always scheming on ways to climb up and murder their way to a higher level in the food chain. And no one really knows what’s been brewing on the bottom floor, and could shake up the entire system, forever.
The cast of the film is made up of Spanish stars like Massagué as the lead, Goreng, and Zorion Eguileor as his cunning cellmate Trimagasi. Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale, Elexandra Masangkay, Mario Pardo, and more all appear throughout the film playing various inmate roles.
