10 best movies like ‘The Platform,’ ranked
Sorry Super Mario fans, this list is going to be short on literal platforms. The Platform isn’t really about the titular physical object at all, but rather the class divide metaphor it represents. Looking for more films about social inequality and the violence it creates? Here are the 10 best movies like The Platform, ranked.
10. Ready Or Not (2019)
Ready Or Not is a horror comedy about one of the most horrible groups of people on Earth: one’s in-laws. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s film is about a young bride who is about to join an old-money family. They’re eccentric like many old-money people are. Not “eccentric” in a “spend millions on a baseball card collection” way but a “force your eldest son’s new bride to play a deadly game of hide and seek where if she’s captured she’ll be sacrificed to a demon.” This movie takes the immorality of wealth literally, as a demon helped the family acquire it.
9. Cube (1997)
Vincenzo Natali’s Cube is about a platform in 3D! The protagonists awake to find themselves trapped inside a labyrinthian 3D maze full of deadly traps. They must work together to escape this cube of death. What does the cube mean? It’s up for interpretation, but I suppose you could say it’s a metaphor for the rat race of the modern world, one that everyone is trying to escape at each other’s expense. Or it’s some kind of freaky government experiment. When it comes to murder mazes, who’s to say?
8. The Menu (2022)
Mark Mylod’s The Menu is about sticking it to elites with a rib-sticking good meal. Invited to a famous chef’s private island restaurant, a group of well-to-do’s bite off more than they can chew when they find out that their host has some rather involved dinner plans. The head chef intends to torture the elites over a multi-course meal, and the hapless haves (and one have-not) attempt to escape. The film brings up an often overlooked point when it comes to stories about social revolution. When class warfare occurs, innocents can get caught in the crossfire.
7. Battle Royale (2000)
Before there was The Hunger Games, there was Battle Royale. Kinji Fukasaku’s survival thriller takes place in a dystopian Japan where each year, one middle school class is sent to an island and told to slaughter each other until only one remains. Needless to say, it ain’t nothing like Fortnite. Explosive collars, edged weapons, and Chekov’s Uzi all make a grisly appearance. One could say that the film is a metaphor for a cutthroat educational system, where students are tasked with excellence at the expense of their own sanity.
6. Saw (2004)
Before becoming a B-list torture porn franchise, James Wan’s Saw had something to say. Two men find themselves chained to the floor of a bathroom, and are forced to play a series of deadly games at the instruction of a mysterious serial killer. Like The Platform, Saw is a film about the desperate lengths humans will go to in order to survive. Unlike The Platform, the circumstances surrounding the characters aren’t as easily explained. Why have they been imprisoned? Will they ever escape? Who’s that dead guy on the floor? So many questions, all better left unanswered.
5. Us (2019)
Jordan Peele’s Us is a story of the have-nots rising up against the haves. In this film, the haves are not the rich elites at the top of the social ladder, but everyday people just trying to get by. A family on vacation is accosted by a group of doppelgängers who are attempting to kill them and take their place, and they must fight to survive. It’s a home invasion film … where the home invaders actually make a really good case for home ownership.
4. Coherence (2013)
If you thought The Platform and The Menu got ugly, James Ward Byrkit’s Coherence is just about the worst possible dinner party in the entire universe. A group of friends in a suburban home find themselves stuck in a cosmic nightmare after a mysterious comet passing planet Earth causes ripples in space and time. Alternate realities converge, and alternate versions of the group begin to show up at the house. Not all of them are friendly.
3. Snowpiercer (2013)
Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer is a post-apocalyptic class struggle, because yes, class still exists at the end of the world. Climate change smothered the Earth in a global ice age, and humanity’s last remnants are confined to a bullet train that eternally circumnavigates the planet. The haves live in excess at the front of the train, while the have-nots eat gruel and work the engines … at least until the day they decide to violently topple the status quo. That day is today.
2. District 9 (2009)
Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 examines classism and xenophobia through a science fiction lens. After crustacean-like alien refugees park their spaceship above South Africa, the aliens are quartered into encampments to live in squalor. After a government bureaucrat is exposed to a chemical that causes him to slowly mutate into an alien, he experiences the cruelty of the aliens’ apartheid-like conditions firsthand. It’s a film about an oppressor becoming a member of the oppressed, and his horrific realization that these seemingly non-human alien beings think, feel, love, and suffer just like we do.
1. Parasite (2019)
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is the paragon of class-centric social commentary. The film revolves around the poor Kim family in South Korea who manage to finagle their way into being employed by a rich one. They’ve got a good thing going! They’re making good money, and the rich Park family is none the wiser that the Kims got their jobs through somewhat unscrupulous methods. It all falls apart once the Kim family figures out that they weren’t the first to have the idea. Another family is living in the Park family’s basement, and the Kims are going to have to deal with the interlopers if they intend to keep their jobs.
Parasite is a film about the brutal lengths human beings will go to hold onto what little they have, and make sure that no one else comes to take it.
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