The second film Neflix has made out of Josh Malerman’s dystopian thriller novel “Bird Box” has two veterans of the viral/zombie thriller genre, the Spanish Pastor brothers (“Carriers”), behind the camera, and not the Emmy winning Danish director Susanne Bier, of “Things We Lost in the Fire,” “In a Better World” and TV’s “The Night Manager.”

It doesn’t have Sandra Bullock struggling to save herself and her children years after a monstrous invasion that triggered mass suicides, with any person who gazes upon that creature immediately embracing the idea of death.

So it’s fair to treat “Bird Box: Barcelona” as a stand-alone film, a concurrently-set story that covers a period of time well after the attack, with flashbacks taking us back to the shock and slaughter of those first hours in which the world succumbed to monsters who didn’t kill, they just made us want to die.

The first film arrived hot on the heels of “A Quiet Place,” a 2018 blockbuster in theaters, and earned comparisons to that, Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening,” as well as other apocalyptic thrillers.

“Barcelona” leans hardest on “The Omega Man,” as its a movie about blind faith, a cult that springs up out of this catastrophe, a priest turned-cult-leader and an “angel” acolyte of that cult haunted by a need to “free” those struggling to survive by “letting” (making) them “see” the unseeable. That’s the entity and phenomenon that inspires everyone to look for a rope, a roof to jump from, a sharp object or anything at hand that might allow them to end their lives.

It’s pretty creepy, and the religious subtext gives this “Bird Box” a weight that Ms. Bullock’s tear-jerking Netflix blockuster lacked.

We meet Sebastian (Mario Casas) as he leads his tween girl Anna (Alejandra Howard) through the ruins of Barcelona, seeking one safe, dark place after another to hide and food enough for them to eat.

He gets jumped by thieves who beat him badly, but Anna implores him to not fight back. Then he meets and falls in with a small group holed up in a bus depot where his wounds are treated and we wonder if this is how civilization rallies and starts to develop a strategy to fight back.

But the fact that Anna doesn’t come with him gives us a clue. When Sebastian flips-out and kills or causes others to kill themselves, we have confirmation.

Anna is a ghost. Sebastian sees himself as an Angel of Death sent out, with Anna’s voice and vision to guide him as he leads others to “see” and kill themselves.

Sebastian’s mission was born, we learn in flashbacks, in the deranged reaction to the entity/contagion by one priest (Leonardo Sbaraglia). He “sees” and somehow survives, and figures everyone ought to do what he’s done.

But Sebastian’s “mission” is tested when he falls in with a group that includes the British shrink and author of “Age of Madness: How to Survive the Modern World” Claire (Georgina Campbell) and a little German girl (Naila Schuberth) who can’t even communicate with those who would save her. With human predators on the prowl, they’re understandably wary of letting Sebastian in.

“The one thing more terrifying than the darkness, right,” Claire says, in English (much of the movie is in subtitled Spanish or German)? “Not knowing WHO you can trust!”

Will this group survive their quest to reach a possible refuge, the cable-tram-isolated Montjuic overlooking Barcelona?

The script does a LOT of over-explaining in the finale, as well as hinting that this is a “franchise” Netflix won’t soon be giving up. But there’s also the explaining of Father Esteban and others, that what one experiences when “seeing” the thing that makes objects levitate when it shows up is something akin to a mental take-stock moment, a chance to atone for past sins or give yourself over to past trauma by killing yourself.

Can one “see” souls rising to heaven when people around you kill themselves? The seraphim necklace Anna wore to Catholic school gives us more Biblical interpretation to chew on about this awful “test” of humanity.

The film may not have the sensitive Dane Bier behind the camera and Bullock yanking out a few tears, but it manages a touching moment or two. And the Pastor brothers make the action beats visceral and exciting.

There’s almost enough here to recommend, but like the other “Bird Box,” there’s not enough that’s surprising, gripping or moving to make anybody forget “A Quiet Place” or its sequel. Novel setting aside, this just isn’t original enough to manage much in the way of shock and awe.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, suicide

Cast: Mario Casas, Georgina Campbell, Diego Calva, Lola Dueñas, Gonzalo de Casto, Naila Schuberth and Leonardo Sbaraglia

Credits: Scripted and directed by David Pastor and Àlex Pastor, inspired by the Josh Malerman novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:52