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Angela is a television reporter and the host of a news segment titled “When You’re Asleep” Angela and her camera man, Pablo, film people and things active in the city while most of the inhabitants are sleeping. On this particular night, Angela and Pablo will be filming a group of firefighters at their station including any calls they may have to go on. While the firemen experience a fireman’s typical night of waiting for something interesting to happen, Angela and Pablo resort to filming boring activities such as eating, sleeping and a game of basketball. Much to Angela’s relief, the station finally gets a call from a nearby apartment building. Residents have reported that an elderly shut-in is locked in her apartment and is screaming like a banshee. When the firemen get to the location, with Angela and Pablo in tow, they find that the police are also there and the apartment buildings residents are all huddled on the ground floor foyer.

With Angela reporting on the events as they transpire, and Pablo continually filming, the situation turns from from mundane to hellish in the blink of an eye. It gets even worse when everyone in the building, including the police and firemen who initially answered the call, are all quarantined inside the building. Any attempt to escape would offer certain death from the military who are now outside guarding the building, and staying inside could mean an even worse fate. Angela, Pablo, the other residents of the apartment building must try and survive and ultimately find a way out. And so begins [REC]. A roller coaster ride of a movie, if the roller coaster consisted only of a slow, 30 minute roller coaster ride up a hill and then proceeded into a 40 minute, break-neck free fall.

Directed by Jaume Balageuro and Paco PlazaIn, [REC] is a white-knuckler filmed in the same voyeuristic style as films such as Blair Witch Project. It is of the “found footage” variety that some of you love and some of you loathe. Luckily, after a few terrible BWP copycats (The St. Francisville Experiment, anyone?), the “found footage” genre has seen some decent films of late such as Romero’s Diary of the Dead and even some recent entries like The PoughKeepsie Tapes and the upcoming Cloverfield. Does [REC] bring anything worthwhile to the table? Absolutely. [REC] delivers the goods and is easily one of the better horror films to use the cinéma-vérité technique to date. With outstanding performances by the cast and the lack of a soundtrack, the entire film achieves it’s goal of making the viewing experience personal and putting you there with these people and their plight. Whether the camera is shaky, out of focus, or on the floor, the style and atmosphere created make everything seem very realistic and necessary. While certain portions of the last act feel a little like walking through a Halloween Haunted House, [REC] never feels too much like any of the scenes were staged or scripted, avoiding one of the major pitfalls associated with this type of film. There is blood in the film, but it is not a splatter-fest. The film is more effective portraying the escalating terror instead of trying to use any elaborate gore effects to achieve it’s goal.

What helps sell the film, and it’s Descent-like death spiral, is how Pablo handles the camera. In the beginning, it is deliberate, methodical and familiar with any type of documentary or news report. But the more the film progresses, the more things spiral completely out of control, the camera works echoes it’s handler. It is now shaky, frenzied. Later, the camera is used not only to film, but when the lights go off, it is their only source of light. When that fails? Nightvision. It is at this point in the film when viewers will get what they came for if they wanted to be scared in any way. While the film is laden with tension and a few “jump scares” it’s the last 5 minutes of the film are spectacularly creepy and unnerving. It is also what helps thrust this already competent horror movie into the top tiers of horror films with an ending that will be hard for viewers to forget.

An American remake is in the works already, picked up by Sony’s Screen Gems, who have reportedly hired John and Drew Dowdle, the filmmakers behind the already mentioned The Poughkeepsie Tapes. They will write and direct the film (called Quarantine).

Links

IMDB | Trailer | Official Site