The story vaguely starts in a busy setting.

You will see first a dynamic place where the food is

being meticulously prepared. There is a busy older adult in a formal suit, somewhat an authority figure
who roams around the place and checks if everything is on the menu like there’s a vast food fest about to
happen. You can see different types of meat, fish, fruit, wine, and dessert prepared. The place where they
prepare the food is called ‘’Platform Zero’’. The people inside are hired to prepare the best quality food
for Platform One and beyond. A bearded man named Goreng wakes up in a concrete room where he sees
an older man whose name is Trimagasi. This smug older man tells him that they’re on platform 48 and
it’s the first day of the month. He also explains that they will eat whatever the leftovers were from levels
1-47. The older man says ‘’obviously’’ as his catchphrase every time he ends a sentence like Naruto’s
‘’dattebayo’’. The younger man attempts to shake the older man's hand as a sign of gesture. He introduces
himself as Goreng. The older man responds, requesting to get back to his spot. The smug older man
assumes that his roommate will not last long since he is too friendly. Then he introduces himself as
Trimagasi. After one month, the roommates get shuffled into another platform. When it's time to eat, a
platform full of leftovers food descends. Trimagasi is surprised that there's wine still left with the bottle.
Goreng skips eating because of disgust. He sees a clean-looking apple and keeps it for later. When it's
time for the platform to descend, Trimagasi empties the wine, spits what's left in his mouth, and throws
the bottle below. After the platform lowers, the room starts to heat up and fry everything inside.
Trimagasi, being the veteran, tells him it's the apple Goreng keeps which heats or cools the room if
anyone tries to keep the food. He drops the apple. Goreng entered ''the Hole'' because he wanted to quit
his smoking habit and get the chance to read Don Quixote. On the second day, Trimagasi does the usual
and eats the leftovers. Trimagasi explains that he accidentally killed someone outside because he threw
his television out of frustration after buying a self-sharpening knife called Samurai Max. The authorities
gave him two options. It is either they will take him to the Nuthouse or The Hole where he ''obviously'' is
currently located. Goreng asks how deep is the hole. Trimagasis says he was deep in 132 but there were
more floors than he could see below. Goreng shows what he brought with him as he enters the Hole, a
copy of Don Quixote. Trimagasi then reveals what he brought in the Hole. A Samurai Plus, which Goreng
joked about earlier. The next day, Trimagasi is usually shown feasting on food. Goreng decides to join
him. Another day passes, Trimagasi brags about how the Samurai Plus gets sharper while Goreng
stretches his body as he is reading the book. As they talked, a person from a higher platform falls and
bumps near the edge where Goreng stands. The corpse continuously falls down the platform. Goreng gets
his face splattered with blood. Due to shock, Goreng accuses Trimagasi of eating his roommate when he
was 132 for survival. While they are fighting, the platform descends with a lady sitting in the middle of it.
Trimagasi calls the woman who descended from the platform Miharu. Trimagasi says that Miharu kills
her roommates at the end of the month. She does this so she can look for her son below the platform.
Trimagasi hints that the man who fell may be Miharu's victim. Trimagasi also explained that at platform
132 he and his roommate ate a corpse who fell on them for survival. His roommate then got out of the
hole with an accreditation. Miharu then gets harassed by people on platform 49. After a few seconds, they
hear a couple of men screaming. Miharu gets back on the platform and then descends. Goreng reads the
book to Trimagasi. They get along until it is the last day of the month. Trimagasi prayed that they get to a
higher level because he's grown fond of Goreng and his kindness. They both doze off because of the
sleeping gas. In his second month, Goreng wakes up tied up to his bed. With Trimagasi welcoming him
with his Samurai Plus. He and Trimagasi happen to be in a lower level in platform 171 where it is likely
to have no food at all. Trimagasi promises that he will not eat Goreng after 7 days until he gets hungry.
On the eight-day, he caves in to his hunger and starts cutting Goreng's leg. Trimagasi starts calling
Goreng his little snail. Miharu attacks him and frees Goreng. Goreng kills Trimagasi, and they feed on
some of his flesh. Miharu nurses Goreng and gets back down on the platform to look for her son. Goreng
eats Trimagasi's rotten flesh for survival for the whole month. On the night before Goreng's transfer, as
the gas spreads in the room, Trimagasi haunts him and tells him they are the same. There's also Goreng's
fever dream of making love with Miharu. In the third month, Goreng realizes a familiar face. He wakes
up with Inoguiri with her dog Ramezes the 2nd. She is an administration official who interviewed him
before entering the hole they are in level 33 Inoguiri is firm and balancing the platform's equilibrium and
sees to feed all 200 floors equally which Goreng disagrees with seeing what he experienced in platform
171. First, she tries balancing her food with her dog by eating in turns each day. He also persuades people
below her to do the same. However, no one listens to her until Goreng threatens everyone to fill other
people's food with his feces. Everyone listened to him after that. Further tensions rose when Miharu
arrives on platform 33. Unconcious all bruised up and wounded. They panic so much on lifting Miharu
through a bed that they neglect Ramezes the 2nd. Goreng suddenly notices the sudden drop in room
temperature and sees Ramezes the 2nd biting a strip of meat which Goreng quickly snatches Ramezes the
2nd and He throws back the strip of meat under the hole. When Miharu regained her consciousness, she
attempted to eat Ramezes the 2nd leaving blood and gusts on the floor. after seeing this, Miharu goes to
the platform and Inogouri reveals she has terminal cancer. Inogouri clarifies that there are 200 floors in
total and the administration would not allow children to join the program, negating Miharu's cause in the
search for her son. She accuses Miharu of being a delusional aspiring actress who wanted to be an ''Asian
Marilyn Monroe''. In the fourth month, Goreng wakes up at level 202, He discovers that Inoguiri has
hanged herself. Now he gets forced to eat Inoguiri with Trimagasi and Inoguiri insulting him but he
forcefully controls himself, even eating his book pages. At the end of the month, his hallucination
worsens as Trimagasi persuades him to eat Inoguiri. In the fifth month, he wakes up with another
roommate named Baharat on Platform 6. Baharat attempts to climb upwards but Goreng convinces him to
move downwards instead. They team up to persuade everyone to get rations equally. They start to
distribute food from Platform 50 below. Those who relent to them, they treat violently. A wise inmate
named Sr. Brambang advises them to leave an untouched panna cotta as a message to the administration.
As they descend further, they see Miharu getting stabbed multiple times in a fight. They help her but it's
too late, She's gone. In the confrontation, Goreng gets bloodied up and Baharat suffers a fatal stab wound.
Before they reach Platform 250 and beyond, they saw many atrocities of humans way beyond their
expectations. As Goreng and Baharat reach Platform 333, they noticed how the platform completely
stopped. However, as they both step off, it lowered down once again. Then they noticed that they had not
been fried nor frozen for bringing the panna cotta with them. They see Miharu's lost son which turns out
to be a daughter. Miharu doesn't speak the whole movie so there wasn't any hint on the child's identity.
Goreng and Baharat gave the panna cotta to the girl presuming she is hungry and hasn't eaten anything for
days. During the nighttime, he gets another hallucination from Trimagasi. They were tempting him to eat
Baharat or the girl. What makes his hallucination worse is even Inoguiri and Miharu appeared with
Trimagasi to tempt Goreng. Goreng wakes up seeing Baharat bathing in his blood. Goreng goes down to
the bottom, a vacuous space with only the light from the uppermost rooms can provide limited visibility.
Trimagasi welcomes the bruised and wounded Goreng below the dark space beyond the platform. They
end up realizing that there's no need for Goreng to aid the girl when it gets back up top to be the message.
Goreng joins Trimagasi on the bottom-most floor. Goreng demands from Trimagasi not to be called little
snail again with Trimagasi replying not to use his word also. Goreng ends his journey leaving the girl on
top of the platform as the message to the administration.

The entire film takes place in a sort of futuristic or Camus-esque structure called “The Hole.”
Hundreds of floors tall, it is a prison in which people are placed on floors two at a time. Every day, a
platform descends through a large hole in the middle of the building, and it’s the only chance for food for
the entire day. On level 1, the prisoners have access to a feast of lovingly prepared dishes. If everyone
only ate a small ration, it could make it all the way to the bottom with something for each prisoner. It
never does. The main protagonist is Goreng which is a stock character, he has volunteered to be in the
Hole to get his hands on that diploma. He claims his favorite food is snails, which metaphysically
represent patience, but also being emotionally distracted. He starts off on level 48. Next is Trimagasi
which is a foil character. Trimagasi is an old man who’s committed the crime of accidentally killing
someone by tossing his TV out of his window in a fit of rage. He chose The Hole over the prison. He’s
been on many other levels and has killed and eaten his floor-mate as there was no other option down there
for the food. Then we have Miharu, a symbolic character who is a mentally disturbed woman who has
been in the Hole for 10 months. We don’t know what happened to Miharu, she is an example of one who
has fallen in the metaphorical sense. She doesn’t talk to anybody, but Trimagasi claims that she’s looking
for her daughter. He also mentions that Miharu murders her floor-mate, hoping to be reunited with her
daughter in the following month. Each month, she descends – searching, hunting. Now, this information
is mostly urban legend as she doesn’t bother speaking to anyone. So it’s unlikely to be the truth. When
she came to the Hole, Miharu was an actress with no children. Her choice of item to bring with her was a
ukulele. It appears that the initial months were very harsh on her, and she lost her mind. She’s vengeful
and has become a self-appointed disrupter of the system. Anyone who gets in her way, she kills. Lastly,
we have Imogouri, a round character, was an employee of the Administration for 25 years. She
interviewed the people who were sent to the Hole. Unfortunately, she developed cancer and lost her fight
against it after 3 years. Hence, she decided to be sent to the Hole to try and be of help. While she thinks
she knew everything about the Hole, it’s gruesome nature is a surprise to her as well. Imoguiri hopes to
instill a spontaneous sense of solidarity to save the Hole’s residents. In the past it was she who selected
both Goreng and Miharu for the Hole. Now that we have discussed the characters, it is now time to
explain the plot. It starts at platform 48. Goreng wakes up on level 48 and meets his floor-mate,
Trimagasi. He initially attempts to get a system of rationing the food but fails miserably and gives up.
Trimagasi explains that the people above have a full stomach and have time to contemplate, which causes
them to commit suicide because there might be no way out. Goreng sees Miharu descending and tries to
help her when the men below assault her but understands that she’s well equipped with self-defense when
she guts the two men. On level 171, the next month, Goreng wakes up in level 171 and finds himself tied
to the bed. Trimagasi explains that hunger makes people go mad and that he will be kind enough to feed
on small pieces of flesh from Goreng, and then tend to his wounds. A week in, Trimagasi begins cutting
Goreng but is attacked and killed by Miharu, who’s passing through. She then treats Goreng’s injuries
and feeds him Trimagasi’s flesh to keep him alive. Miharu knows Goreng tried to help her, and that’s
why she’s being kind to him. Next, level 33, the following month, Goreng wakes up in level 33 with his
new floor-mate, Imoguiri, who unsuccessfully tries to instill solidarity in the levels below to ration the
food. Miharu passes on the platform unconscious, and they nurse her. Unfortunately, Miharu wakes up at
night and feasts on Imoguiri’s dog. Sadly, the sausage dog does turn out to be more sausage than the dog.
The month passes by eventlessly, and Goreng uses fear to force the level below ration food, but that
doesn’t percolate all the way down. Then level 202, In the next month, Goreng wakes up in level 202 and
sees that Imoguiri has hung herself. She assumed there were only 200 levels, but she realizes that she had
the wrong information despite working for the Administration. Although, she doesn’t kill herself because
of that. She was anyway suffering from cancer, and 202 is going to have no food. She leaves her dead
body so that Goreng could survive the month feeding on her. Goreng does just that, and another month
passes by painfully. Lastly in level 6, Goreng wakes up in Level 6 in the following month with a new
floor-mate, a man name Baharat, who’s a man of faith. Baharat tries to climb his way to the top placing
way too much faith in humanity and gets literally sh*t on. After that, Goreng convinces Baharat that they
should just force the rationing by going down on the platform and using power and fear to break the
system. They decide that they will go down 50 floors and start handing out food only from the 51st floor.
The ones on top have had full bellies. Goreng mentions that he counted the time taken for the platform to
shoot back up and calculates about 250 levels (he doesn’t account for the platform not stopping on floors
with no one left alive, so there are way more floors). The remainder of the film is how the descent of
Goreng and Baharat pans out. Sadly, not too well, read on. The theme of the film reflects the ethics of
Capitalism that churns the unequal distribution of wealth which the modern world has entangled itself.
The film perfectly fits the trap society has stuck upon itself with the framework of metaphor, so much so,
the filmmakers struggle to conclude to reach the film. The ending is open for a wide interpretation of
one’s perception.

I liked the originality of the film and how it is brilliantly crafted for it explores selfishness and
mankind’s ability to be cruel in a dark, sobering environment. The film follows this cycle through the
eyes of Goreng (Ivan Massagué) as he learns how to survive in prison. The prison acts as a literal
hierarchy for all prisoners. People treat those a floor below them like trash, smashing a plate or bottle
down on the platform to make it that much harder to get the food safely. Just one floor above Goreng, no
one listens to his pleas to ration the food, so prisoners much lower down have less of a chance to eat and
survive. On lower floors, he looks for food in any available source, like his copy of “Don Quixote” and
the rotting corpses of previous prisoners on the lower levels. While the film tackles greed, it doesn’t feel
as original as previous films. “Cannibal Holocaust” exists to show how people can be terrible if it means
acquiring fame, but many films and shows already use food as a means of survival and power. As far as
acting goes, it’s fine. Every character is believable in this world and builds up tension and drama
properly, but it’s nothing special in itself. In terms of cinematography, the movie has nothing special
either. Despite every floor being somewhat small, several shots are used to convey the rare action
sequence. In dark places, it becomes difficult to figure out what’s going on with nighttime flooding every
floor in a dark red that hides any scars or blood drawn in any fights. “The Platform” is a thrilling film
exploring several concepts. With a number of changing parts throughout the film, it quickly becomes
unpredictable and disturbing. While many people are staying in under quarantine, this film should be used
as a guideline on how not to deal with people and food. People can still act civil and ration resources out
without treating each other like trash or ravaging resources before others have a chance to get them,
especially with the mass demand for many items nowadays.