The Platform | 2019 | TV-MA | – 5.8.7

Why is “The Platform” rated TV-MA? The MPAA has not rated this film. The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes one possible sex scene with partial nudity and a couple of scenes of nudity, including a topless woman; several scenes of people killing each other with knives and eating pieces of the flesh of the bodies with a lot of blood, scenes of people fighting over limited food, many scenes of people being held in dark and grimy conditions in a prison setting without food, a few fights with punches and kicking and several arguments; and about 25 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”

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In a dystopian society criminals and psychiatric patients are incarcerated in a multi-story prison, where a platform of upscale food dishes descends once daily from top to bottom. The system provides food for only a brief time on each level to those who can grab it and mayhem and murder are the result as lower level inmates fight for scraps and survival. With Iván Massagué, Emilio Buale Coka, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan, Alexandra Masangkay and Eric L. Goode. Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. Filmed in Spanish and dubbed in English with a few phrases in Spanish without translation. [Running Time: 1:34]

The Platform SEX/NUDITY 5

 – A woman opens her shirt to reveal her bare breasts. We see a man in full back nudity from head to mid-thighs (his bare buttocks are shown). Two men sitting in a pool are nude (their genitals are not visible; we see bare chests, abdomens and legs). We see the bare shoulders and upper chest of an elderly man briefly.
► In a brief dream sequence, a man in a very dark room rubs the side of a woman (we glimpse her abdomen), and we see their faces and a bare shoulder as he kisses her lips from above (it is not clear if they are having sex).

The Platform VIOLENCE/GORE 8

 – A man tells his cellmate that he plans to eat strips of the man’s flesh as he ties him to a bunk and gags him with cloth, causing screaming and groaning; he cuts into the cellmate’s thigh, causing blood to gush along with new screams (he does not eat any flesh) until a woman in the cell grabs the knife and stabs the attacker in the throat, producing gushing blood and she sits on him and cuts out pieces of flesh dripping with blood, eats them, chews some and feeds some to another man twice (he gags and moans and blood covers their faces and her forearms and hands). A man in a dark room savagely stabs another man lying below the frame with a large carving knife (blood and matter are thrown into the frame). A man stabs a woman below the frame many times and we hear the cuts but see no blood. A grimy woman sits on a platform of food in several scenes and rides it down through a series of shafts in floors; in one scene she screams as two men grab her and pull her away and she kills them off-screen (we hear screams) and returns to the platform. A man awakens and finds that a woman hanged herself (we see her shoes and trouser legs against a wall above the floor) and the man talks to the ghost of an elderly man and then uses a large knife to cut some flesh from the woman and eat it as it drips blood and a woman’s voice chants, “Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood.”
► Two men argue briefly and descend on a food platform to ration out the food to starving prisoners; they attack men and women who resist or attempt to eat more, hitting them with iron clubs, punching and kicking them amid shouts and we see that a woman is killed in a fistfight and her face and neck are bloody, and a man’s face is covered in bruises and blood. A man stabs another man with a Samurai sword and we see some blood. Two women fight in a cell with punching and slapping and we hear that one woman killed and ate the other woman’s dog. A man awakens as his cellmate tries to climb up and escape through another level using a rope, but a man and a woman push him back down.
► Two men descend on a platform until it reaches what they think is the bottom floor and it stops, they get off and the platform leaves, stranding them; they discover a young girl and feed her until one of the men passes out and dreams of a man telling him, “The girl is the message”; one man finds the other man dead with dried blood on a cut on his arm, and takes the child to the bottom of the building where he meets an elderly man’s ghost and he is left there as the platform ascends (he could be dead but it is unclear).
► A man lowers his trousers and defecates through a hole in a floor and into another man’s face; the second man shouts and screams. In close-up from behind, we see a stream of urine as a man urinates through a hole in a floor onto a platform of food. A man spits onto food as it lowers on a platform to another room in several scenes. Two men spit at each other and we see the spittle. A body falls from a large hole in a ceiling through a room and out of a hole in the floor in three scenes; in one of the scenes a pile of feces follows the body. A man eats pages from a book.
► A platform of food stays in a prison cell for less than a minute while two men eat fast with their hands; one man saves an apple for later as the platform descends through a hole in the floor and the cell overheats to make the two men sweat for punishment for hoarding the apple. Two men try to help a sick woman by covering her with a blanket in one of their bunks and the room becomes extremely cold as punishment; the three people shudder and moan. We hear that inmates are gassed to sleep every 30 days and placed on different levels, and we see many dirty, bloody dead bodies of men and women on lower levels in darkened cells.
► A man slams plates of leftovers off a platform table to the floor with a loud crash. A man dances on top of food on a platform. A man shouts and grimaces at many chefs about a dessert he is holding. A man tells another man that a woman prisoner kills her new cellmate every month. A man dreams that a woman is charging toward him with a large knife, and then he awakens with a gasp. A man with Downs Syndrome says he will kill another man, open him up, and eat him (we do not see this).
► A man awakens in a concrete cell on level 48 of a “Vertical Self-Management Center” where his cellmate is an old man who says they are in a tower-style prison where food arrives once daily on a floating platform through large holes in the floors and ceilings; inmates on lower levels can eat only leftovers that look like garbage left by those higher up and we see that there are over 333 levels and those on level 132 and lower get no food at all.
► A man says that he is in prison to earn a diploma and his cellmate admits that he is there for manslaughter; the cellmate threatens to cut flesh from the first man — except the genitals, because he will save them to eat later.
► A man carries a self-sharpening carving knife with him, picking his fingernails and scratching his head with it; when no food ever arrives for the cell, he tells a cellmate that a former cellmate died and he ate pieces of the corpse. A woman rations her food and tries to convince two men in the level below her to ration theirs, but they shout and curse at her; her cellmate curses loudly at the two men below them and threatens to defecate in their food before a platform of leftovers will descend to them through a hole in the floor. A man awakens in a cell as a dog licks his face and his cellmate says that she volunteered to fix the inhumane conditions of the prison, especially the lack of food, when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A man talks to the ghost of an elderly man in a few scenes.

The Platform LANGUAGE 7

 – About 25 F-words and its derivatives, 4 anatomical terms, 11 mild obscenities, name-calling (dumb, stupido, bastard, stupid, lunatic, crazy woman, delirious, boy, Black guy, white man’s servant, murderers, murdering [bitch], garbage, puppets, tasty little roommate, escargot, snail, My Snail, Messiah, Messiah of [scatological term deleted], King of [scatological term deleted], 2 religious profanities (GD), 8 religious exclamations (e.g. Jesus, Sweet Jesus, Praise Jesus, Holy [scatological term deleted], Amen, Do You Believe In God?). | profanity glossary |

The Platform SUBSTANCE USE

 – A man drinks from a wine bottle, two men drink from different wine bottles, and wine bottles and carafes of wine are shown on a platform. A man lights and puffs a cigarette several times.

The Platform DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Class differences, racism, mental illness, incarceration, crime, bullying, hoarding, selfishness, rationing, starvation, death, ghosts, reason, social justice, socialism, violence, murder, cannibalism, fear, anger, survival.

The Platform MESSAGE

 – Children will save society from bigotry, class differences, and injustice.