The Platform 2 Parent Guide

The Pit is a terrible prison, with two-person cells stacked one atop the other for hundreds of levels. Food is loaded onto a platform that lowers from the very top once a day, and everyone is supposed to have a personal meal – but when people above start eating more than their share, people below starve. Sometimes, food doesn’t reach the lowest levels for a whole month – at which point, the cells are reassigned, seemingly at random.

Newcomers and cellmates Perempuan (Milena Smit) and Zmiatin (Hovik Keuchkerian) are informed by the occupants of the cell above theirs (a respectable level 24) that there is now Law in the prison: No inmate eats the food of another, under any circumstances. Violators will be attacked by the inmates above them to ensure that food makes it as deep as possible into the pit. Conditions in the depths are slow to improve, though, and those who made the Law have sent up a fanatical zealot (Óscar Jaenada) to enforce order – at any cost.

Although I wasn’t particularly enthused about the idea of a sequel, this movie surprised me. It’s got a lot of the same energy as the original, and explores new characters and ideas in a way that feels connected without feeling identical. Like the original film, this production explores creeping authoritarianism and extremism rather than selfish individualism, and it’s both an interesting commentary and an interesting watch.

The cramped conditions of the Pit mean the sets are all, basically, the same apart from their assigned residents, and that sense of dreadful, inevitable sameness produces a nicely miserable drone in the background of the hideous atrocities on the surface. Parents are not going to be thrilled with the frequent profanity, nor the exceptionally graphic and brutal violence. I don’t think the repeated nudity is going to win them over either.

There’s a lot to chew on with the movie, and not just the other inmates. Like the original Platform, there’s a lot of philosophy in practice, like someone turned a screenwriter loose on a thought exercise. The extreme circumstances of The Pit demand dramatic choices, and characters spent a lot of the film trying to explain their choices or to persuade others, which gives the audience many opportunities to dig into the premise. The script has some weak spots, but I think they’re balanced by the rest of the film. Provided, of course, that you can stomach the violence