How Netflix’s The Platform Combines Horror and Social Commentary

The capabilities of the horror genre are what make it so special when done right. Across that spectrum of scares sits the horror movie with an eye for social commentary that can cut through an audience as sharply as the killer wielding the knife. Netflix‘s The Platform is an unappreciated gem tucked away in the corner that, despite its high concept, has plenty to say about class and starvation wrapped in a digestible and delicious coating. The Platform might appear simple in its metaphors of the plight of human survival, but its efficiency in establishing its world sits at the heart of what makes it so successful.

Social commentary can act as a weight around a movie’s ankle, constantly holding it back from what it wants to be. The Platform carries that weight at its core, taking the stranded hero archetype and turning him into a vessel for toxic societal structure, providing a new socially conscious step for the horror genre. The Platform has a lot to say trapped inside its prison walls, some obvious, all creatively and viscerally realized.

Horror’s many forms make it the ideal style to hold up a mirror to an audience, distilling various themes of social unrest into a melting pot of tension and pathos. The Platform packs a lot onto its dinner table and tempts its audiences with a desire for freedom in a world where the menu only serves a punishing order. What makes The Platform so compelling? How does it execute its social messages? How does it advance the horror genre? Here’s what you need to know.

The Platform finds irony in the strictness of its surroundings, making it a maddeningly realistic portrait of the flaws in a system of class deficits and uncontrollable unrest among its inhabitants. The Platform feels uncanny in its logic yet uses intrinsically human notions of power and greed to drive its characters to the edge of their sanity.

Violence isn’t the only currency with an exchange rate in The Platform; it’s luck that levitates the prisoners in the same breath as it brings them crashing back down. The randomness of what level someone could end up on adds an acidic spin to traditional images of the rich gorging on massive dinners. The prisoners claw at the food, tearing it apart until it takes on a sickly-looking quality that the horror genre has been known to exploit.

Social commentary doesn’t necessarily have to be layered in ambiguity to have an impact. The Platform is a relatively simple parable, but its simplicity isn’t a bad thing. Nobody is better or more redeemable than the other, so everyone is driving the system even though they might not want to. They have no choice. The cyclical nature of The Platform is perfectly suited to horror and dystopia, with a desperate assumption that there has to be more to it, even though there isn’t.

Horror has long weaponized our greatest fears, and The Platform adds its dystopic spin to a reality that feels disgustingly realistic. The Platform campaigns for equality of resources but deliberately cannot escape its confinement. That’s the heartbreaking truth that The Platform tempts its audience to challenge despite its futility.

The Violence of Netflix’s The Platform

Horror violence can work in many styles. The grounded violence of The Platform elevates the material to frightening levels. Whatever happens on the level you’re on will be reset, making any attempt to escape pointless. It also means there’s no order in the order itself, because the status quo is never maintained for long. Violence in this setting can sit in this undefinable area, where people do all they can to survive without prejudice. That’s a vivid form of horror violence, and The Platform is a vicious experience.

When the violence does boil over, the fact that it’s justifiable, given what’s happening, makes it even darker. The Platform confronts its viewers with the reality of human selfishness and doesn’t take a side either way. It’s ambivalent to the violence it’s creating because that’s how humans react when placed in survival situations. Horror movies often strip control away from the viewer, but The Platform gives the prisoners just enough power to make them responsible for the violence they commit.

What the Horror Genre Can Learn From The Platform Franchise

The horror genre’s artistic resurgence with studios like A24 has given a new social edge to a genre that has been everywhere in its mission to disturb. The Platform lacks the heightened directional style of something like I Saw the TV Glow, but that’s the point. The Platform’s social commentary doesn’t change, nor does it try to. Humans are forced to adapt their behavior because it’s inevitable that they will. It’s that cruel expectation that gives The Platform its brutality and tragedy. Horror is becoming more aware of audience expectations and is having a great time subverting them.

What the genre could learn from The Platform is its use of audience expectations to deliver a truly pessimistic view of humanity. More modern horror movies are refusing a happy ending, but The Platform’s ‘happy’ ending reinforces the violence that has always been there. The lack of change is the most horrific thing The Platform has to offer, a dystopia familiar yet vindictive in its logic.

Recent horrors like Hereditary or Talk to Me work because of the transformation over time from the normal to the abnormal. The Platform is forever abnormal, and as the food table sinks to whatever level you’re on, there comes the realization that it’s the prisoners who have the power to feed the people below them. But they don’t; they worry about themselves, and that’s just how it is. And perhaps that’s how it always will be. The Platform and The Platform 2 are streaming on Netflix now.