Sometime in the future, prisoners housed in a Vertical Self-Management Center watch as inmates in the upper cells are fed while those below starve : Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s directorial debut The Platform is a trip into the depth’s of madness, a disturbing dystopian gem that’s not for the faint hearted : the movie follows Goreng a normal guy who has agreed to spend 6 months of his life in this prison centre for the promise of a diploma on the outside world, of course this is dependant on whether he makes it through his term as each 30 days spent in the center the residents are transfered to another cell on a new level, the higher the cell number the more chance of survival : the story written by David Desola is fresh & downright scary and the work by Iván Massagué in & Zorion Eguileor in bringing Goreng & Trimagasi to life respectively is paramount to how the movie plays out, I could not keep my eyes off the pair of them, it was like watching some sort of depraved stage show, the desperation and brutality in surviving their term is absolute bonkers : the woman travelling up and down the food lift looking for her kid is messed up, that dog scene and Baharat’s attempt to climb a level had me feeling utterly nauseous : overall if your looking for something new & nasty in the horror genre then look no further than The Platform it’s a white knuckle ride that had me rocking in my chair praying for some kind of merciful resolution ★★★★½