The Horror of Being: A Philosophical Review of El hoyo (The Platform)

February 21, 2025

Thanks to Rachel D. Perez, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

Cinema, at its most incisive, does not merely tell stories—it unmasks the world. El hoyo (The Platform, 2019), directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, is one such film, a relentless interrogation of survival, power, and the human condition. Set within a vertical prison where food descends level by level, the film captures the raw brutality of artificial scarcity. Every month, prisoners are randomly reassigned to new levels, shifting between privilege and deprivation. What emerges is not just a social critique but an existential unraveling, revealing the absurdity of moral ideals when faced with hunger. While often framed as an allegory for economic inequality, The Platform is more than a critique of capitalism. It is a meditation on the horror embedded in existence itself. The film’s premise recalls Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, a work that strips human nature down to its most irrational, grotesque essence. Both texts reject the comforting notion that morality is stable under duress. Instead, they expose the fragility of ethical convictions when tested by hunger and fear. The abyss does not just stare back—it consumes.

The Existential Horror of Being

The platform—a descending slab laden with remnants of a once-lavish feast—functions as both sustenance and social order. Its movement dictates power, reducing individuals to the roles of predator and prey in an arbitrary cycle. The Platform is unsettling not just in its violence but in its philosophical weight. It operates within the tradition of existential horror, where human agency is tested against inescapable structures. The prison’s verticality echoes Sartre’s No Exit—a self-contained hell where individuals enact their own damnation. Floor assignments mirror life’s arbitrary injustices: one month at the top, the next starving below. The descent is always looming.

Visually, The Platform is stark and oppressive. Concrete confinement, dim lighting, and the grotesque transformation of abundance into scraps amplify its claustrophobia. The cinematography forces the viewer to inhabit Goreng’s unraveling psyche, shifting between brutal realism and eerie surrealism. His body deteriorates alongside his ideals, mirroring the way deprivation erodes the self. His initial optimism, embodied in his choice to bring Cervantes’ Don Quixote into the prison, fades as he learns that idealism is no shield against hunger. Ultimately, The Platform is not just a film about economic disparity—it is a descent into the ethics of desperation. The horror lies not in the system alone, but in the choices it compels.

At its core, The Platform is not just about capitalism—it is about the inescapability of horror itself. In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky’s protagonist embraces his own irrationality, rejecting the notion of human progress. Similarly, the film strips away the illusion that people will act in their own collective interest. Even when given the opportunity to ration food fairly, prisoners hoard, exploit, and ultimately descend into violence. The possibility of solidarity exists only in theory. Isolation breeds despair, whether in Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, who alienates himself out of disgust, or in Goreng, who descends (literally and figuratively) into madness. Both characters recognize a fundamental truth: to exist is to suffer, to consume, to compete. There is no utopia, no final liberation—only the next cycle of horror.

The film does not simply expose economic injustice; it exposes the monstrous within us all. Horror is not an aberration of life—it is life itself. Why do we insist on viewing horror as exceptional? A baby enters the world screaming in terror. The immune system wages war against unseen threats. Every civilization is built on the bones of those who came before. Horror is not an intrusion upon life but its foundation, its inheritance. Even religious and scientific explanations for existence do not escape this truth. The Book of Isaiah (43:7) suggests that humans exist solely for God’s glory—a revelation that reduces existence to performance. Meanwhile, the Big Bang theory describes creation as an explosion of incomprehensible force—a violent, chaotic birth. If we are born into horror, why do we pretend it is unnatural?

 I urge readers, thinkers, and viewers: do not avert your gaze. Look directly at the horror of being. The Platform as an existential film provides no answers but serves as a mirror held up to our worst instincts. The film does not ask if we will succumb to horror—it reminds us that we already have. For those willing to stare into the abyss, The Platform is essential viewing. It does not offer comfort, only truth. And the truth is this: horror is not an aberration. Horror is the cost of being the mere foundation of it.

Photo credit: Shutterstock/ Dmitry Demidovitch