Gruesome food for thought.

When it comes to horror, simplicity is key. Get yourself a simple, effective hook and your job is half done. Back it up with passion and a good script and you’re onto a winner.

The beauty of horror lies in how far a great concept can take you, regardless of how humble it may first appear. You can have all the big budgets, blood, bells, and CGI whistles you want, but they mean nothing if your central premise can’t back it up.

As we enter an era of unprecedented audience choice, including new and interesting avenues opened up by the likes of Netflix, a good concept and the ability to land it will be crucial in any horror film’s chance of survival. And boy, does The Platform have one killer concept.

Awakening in a square concrete room, Goreng (Iván Massagué) is informed by his cellmate Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) that he is trapped in a vertical prison in which food is delivered only once a day via a platform lowered through a hole in the ceiling. As the platform heads down through an unknown number of floors, those stationed at the top have the pick of the feast while the unlucky souls trapped in the lower reaches are left to starve. Armed with only a copy of ‘Don Quixote’ and his smarts, Goreng must stave off hunger, his fellow inmates, and creeping insanity if he’s to survive the hellish prison of inequality he has found himself in.

In a genre where conception is everything, The Platform is about as high concept as horror gets. Dripping with passion and symbolism, the film hangs everything on its core premise, and like the lowering slab of concrete at its heart, The Platform offers up a riotous feast of scathing social commentary.

It’s an absolute cracker of a set up that dispenses any form of subtlety for a fully loaded, double-barrelled assault on society’s inherent inequalities. As subtext is thrown clean out the window, The Platform ensures we receive its message loud and clear, as it lays everything out on the table in a blistering attack on class, capitalism, social structure, and the twin destructive powers of misinformation and desperation.

As we’re thrown head-first into this dark, dank, and inherently unfair form of hell, only being drip fed mere morsels of information, The Platform is a highly effective, if unapologetically blunt, assault that has you eating out of the palm of its hand. Clocking in at a lean, mean 94 minutes, The Platform’s premise has more than enough about it to hold your attention from beginning to end, as, despite its meandering tendencies, the film stays resolutely focused on its potent message.

Unsurprisingly considering its restricted structure, The Platform’s plot is slight, yet it makes full use of its limitations, as the setup’s natural mystery and the script’s dexterity keep you guessing until the bitter end. The (quite literal) central conceit of the food and how its unbalanced distribution brings out the very worst in everyone from top to bottom, is absolutely enthralling, carrying the film a long way.

With a hint of Cube, a dash of Snowpiercer, and a huge slice of Saw, The Platform revels in the gory ambiguity of its set up, explaining just enough to get by, while leaving your imagination to fill in the blanks. With your mind doing the heavy lifting as it attempts to piece together the unfolding dystopian mystery, the film’s writing does its best to hammer everything else home in a visceral onslaught of the grotesque.

Slowly but surely ramping up the tension and bloodshed, The Platform is an unrelentingly intense, gruelling viewing experience that takes its suffocating environment and lets it steadily crush you. While those seeking a bit of pure escapism in these strange, socially isolated times may want to look elsewhere, for those among us that revel in the gruesome diversion that horror can offer, The Platform is for you.

Utilising a small, unknown cast (at least outside Spain), The Platform’s dialogue is a little broad, as it takes the film’s subtext and slams it repeatedly into your face, however, it’s all delivered with a level of enthusiasm that manages to paper over the cracks. As our lead, Ivan Massagué’s commitment to the part is positively enthralling, and while he certainly isn’t the most charismatic protagonist in the world, Goreng, like those around him, ensure that the often clunky dialogue works well within the confines of what The Platform is trying to achieve.

While the dialogue and acting verge on hammy at times, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s directing keeps things on track throughout. With a firm grip on the film’s aesthetics, Galder makes full use of the film’s restrictions to paint a grim, but no less eye-catching, picture of society in microcosm. Much like the similarly themed Cube, The Platform takes its claustrophobic location and turns it to its advantage, with the cramped, grey cells setting the scene for some incredibly striking horror visuals.

Clearly unafraid to push the horror button as far as it’ll go, Galder piles the blood and gore as high as the film’s stacked cells, in a powerful gut-punch that’s not easily shaken off. As the plot unfolds and the lunacy escalates, the increase in violence comes at the detriment to a narrative that, despite not appearing to have many places to go, often descends into something of a ramble. However, despite the occasionally muddled approach, the visceral, darkly comic visuals, as blood, guts, and food paint the prison’s walls, is an astonishingly arresting experience that will leave you bruised, bloodied, but hungry for more.

For those looking for some kind of escape from our current quarantine-based life, The Platform’s intense confinement and escalating insanity may be a turnoff, however, for those looking for blood, guts, and a scathing indictment of global inequality, this is the horror for you. While it’s message is as subtle as a floating concrete slab, The Platform nonetheless serves up a thrilling, high-concept feast of violence, pitch-black comedy, political allegory, more violence, compelling grotesqueness, and delicious plot twists that delivers a shockingly timely horror tale that leaves its mark.

The Platform is available to stream on Netflix now.