[REC] (Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza, 2007)

[venoms5]

[REC] 2007

Manuela Velasco (Angela Vidal), Pablo Rosso (Pablo)

Directed by Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza

Angela and her cameraman Pablo are part of a nightly television program. One fateful evening they are recording the daily activities of their local fire department. A call comes through later that night of a woman trapped within her apartment. Angela and Pablo accompany the firemen on what is first thought to be a non serious altercation. Once they get to the apartment complex, a frightening discovery is made. An old woman is found near hysterical in her apartment. She quickly attacks a policeman biting him fatally in the throat. The old woman is shot down. Upon attempting to exit the building, police and soldiers seal off all exits to the complex. It is soon learned that a deadly infection has broke out in the building. With the trapped individuals rapidly turning into unstoppable, ravenous, flesh-eating zombies, the remaining survivors manage to find safety within a locked and long dormant apartment upstairs where the most horrible discovery lies in wait.

The winner of many film festival awards, [REC] is a truly scary and surprisingly nail biting horror film from Spain. Some of the most intense scenes of terror in years are found in this movie that owes its being to Romero's zombie movies and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) and maybe a dash of 28 DAYS LATER (2002). The premise is very simple and the directors manage to pull off some great "Boo" moments with highlights being the scene involving the little girl and the seriously goosebump inducing final minutes. Once the movie really gets going the frantic pace never lets up. Everyone goes simply crazy frantically trying to stay alive and just like in BLAIR WITCH the directors kept the cast members in the dark about what was going to happen throughout the numerous attack sequences to capture genuine fright in the performances.

Once the occupants and others are trapped inside the building, the outside authorities inform them that a health inspector will be along shortly to assess the situation. Nothing about their predicament is revealed until the inspector is sent in clad in a biohazard suit. At first he says nothing till the situation begins to get out of hand and he reveals that the infection stems from a sick dog brought to a vet a few days prior--a dog belonging to one of the apartment occupants. Very quickly the scene turns into a savage and harrowing bid to survive the night among the ever growing horde of hungry dead.

There's a lot of shaky cam during some of the more chaotic moments but it's no more so than what is found in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1979). The film also sports some great make up and subtle use of gore. One of the most unsettling aspects of this movie are the sound effects. Whether it be simple noises heard from afar, those heard in pitch black rooms or the extraordinarily unnerving groans and screeches heard from the zombies, the horrific realism is amplified by the lack of music. Nothing compares to the skin crawling final 10 minutes however once the last survivors manage to secure themselves within a locked room the only light being the one mounted on the camera. That is soon broken leaving only the cameras night vision. The less known about the final minutes the better.

The film only lasts a brisk 75 minutes with credits. The film originally ran around 2 hours but was cut down to this length by the directors to intensify the escalating sense of frenzy and horror. The 2 disc edition apparently reveals an alternate ending found during an interview with the lead actress as well as the deleted scenes. The single disc edition, which I have, has a 40 minute making of documentary, audio commentary and a selection of trailers and tv spots. Unfortunately, none of these features have English subtitles. The film itself has an English dub as well as the much preferable Spanish soundtrack with English subtitles. The dub is pretty bad and the intense nature of the film is lost watching the movie in English, IMO.

Adding a blow to this superior horror movie is the dreaded American remake which hits theaters sometime this year under the title QUARANTINE (2008). A trailer is online for this and it seems some of the original films scenes have been re-shot for the remake. I can't imagine it being better than this but as good as [REC] is, I'll definitely check out the US remake to get as close a theatrical experience to the original as possible. With the utterly gruesome French endurance test, INSIDE (2007) and this panic riddled, schizophrenic scare ride easily being the two best horror flicks I've seen in a long while not to mention the highly touted shock fest from France entitled MARTYRS (2008), real horror is definitely found abroad and appears to stay that way for a (hopefully) long, long time.

[venoms5]

Some interesting info on the in-the-works sequel as well as the makers thoughts on the soon-to-released US remake...

http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=7061