The platform is initially filled with lots of food, and gradually descends through the tower's levels, stopping for a fixed amount of time on each floor.

[5] The film's cast includes Iván Massagué, Antonia San Juan, Zorion Eguileor, Emilio Buale Coka and Alexandra Masangkay.

[5] It premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where it won the People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness.

Goreng volunteered to spend six months in the facility in exchange for a diploma, while Trimagasi transferred in serving a year-long sentence.

It is revealed that Imoguiri was the administration official who had interviewed Goreng before sending him to the pit, and had volunteered after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

He gives them tips on how to conduct themselves on the rest of the way down, and convinces them to send a symbolic message to the administration by leaving a single panna cotta untouched.

Baharat repeats "the panna cotta is the message" over and over, but eventually changes his mind and gives the girl the dessert.

[9] Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia says the film's key message is that "humanity will have to move towards the fair distribution of wealth", exploring the importance of individual initiative in driving political change.

[10] The screenplay is adapted from a theatre script by David Desola and Pedro Rivero, to which more action and physical elements were added to make it more suitable for a film.

The director asked for cells that looked "economical, robust, [and] impregnable", which emphasized a sense of architectural and engineering proportion.

[11] The director states that the film's lavish "food was treated as another character in the story, one that is aesthetically antagonistic to the architecture of the prison.

"[11] The luxurious displays of gourmet food were presented on "Versailles worthy tableware" to depict "excessive, almost erotic, opulent desire" that is eventually "desecrated" once the near-empty platform reaches the abject, starving inmates on the lower levels.

[11] The director acknowledges the film can be difficult to watch, but he says the purpose of this approach is to generate discussion and debate by viewers about the political messages.

[10] The film was shot chronologically, as the main actor Iván had to lose 12 kg (26 lbs) over the six-week shoot in order to display his character's physical deterioration.

The site's critical consensus reads: "While it may feel muddled at times, The Platform is an inventive and captivating dystopian thriller.

And Eguileor's nasty, delightful, occasionally tender performance feels like an audition to play a Bond villain, or perhaps the Spanish resurrection of Hannibal Lecter.

Sam Jones in The Guardian suggested it was "the perfect parable for life in the time of the coronavirus and a visceral investigation of how a crisis can expose not only the stratification of human society but also the immutable strands of selfishness coded into our DNA.

In May 2023, Netflix reported the beginning of filming of The Platform 2, with Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia returning as director and starring Hovik Keuchkerian and Milena Smit.