[Rec]

Date posted: Sun, 27/04/2008 - 9:47am

Year:	2008
Director:	Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza
Cast:	Manuela Velasco, Javier Botet, Ferran Terraza, Claudia Font
Rating:	B+
Reviewed by:	Paolo Cabrelli

Following on from the recent Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead, Balagueró & Plaza's film picks up on the handheld, first-person form to create a genuinely chilling horror almost splitting its own stomach with effective, unexpected shocks. [Rec] has been described as derivative simply because of its choice of format. This is a rather silly way of evaluating the movie. The film merely utilizes what can be, in the intimate genre of horror at least, a particularly intriguing perspective to relay the action. In fact, [Rec] makes far more authentic use of the trick than either of the afore mentioned films. Both George Romero and Matt Reeves spend an inordinate portion of the action justifying and explaining why their semi-autistic characters do not simply drop the camera, run, and help their friends. In [Rec], the cameraman, quite simply, is a trained professional, so his impulse to keep filming seems far more genuine.

It's reasonable to say that the plot, although full of quirks, is not particularly original. Clutching fleshy chunks from Alien, Night of the Living Dead, Assault on Precinct 13 and 28 Days Later, [Rec]'s narrative is a well-staggered path. That's not to say, however, that it's dull. Specifically, it tells the story of an over-excited MTV-style presenter, Angela, and her cameraman as they shadow a firefighting crew for the evening. Called to investigate a public disturbance, Angela and the crew become quarantined within an apparently infected apartment building. Chaos ensues as, within the enclosed gothic structure, the cast of strange characters contract the vague disease and attack one another. Yes, this is a zombie film and one of the best I have seen for some time.

I was so heartbroken at the debacle that was Diary of the Dead that I thought I might not recover the necessary hutzpah to watch another zombie film any time soon. Diary was so categorically bad that it made me wonder why I actually like watching the living dead tear people apart - i had a crisis of confidence of sorts. However, everything Romero seemed to get wrong on his fifth outing in the genre Balagueró & Plaza got right, creating a sure-footed, fast-paced, shocking film that ditched Romero's near-meaningless philosophical expositions for tantalizing glimpses that opened up the narrative without snapping its spine. We never know why everyone is infected but there seems some horrid quasi-religious source - perhaps demonic possession tinkered with my a mad scientist – it's not made clear. Suffice to say, the source of the epidemic is unholy - that's all we need to know as an audience. The focus is not on why it's happening, but how it's happening, positioning the movie's concerns in a constantly terrifying present.

The real anti-hero of the film isn't the anarchic disease but its relentless, cruel pace. Unlike Cloverfield, which seemed to offer its characters and audience ample opportunities to pause for breath, [Rec] releases surge after surge of action. The way in which the story spirals from one disaster to another makes the transition from strange to supernatural believable as there is no time to process the events, no time to rationalize or question. The audience's experiences are directly linked to those on-screen. It seems entirely reasonable to me that those who befall disasters only come to a piecemeal of enlightenment. [Rec] has been criticized for keeping its secrets but the desire for more exposition seems to be an unambitious call for more customary fictional constructs. In most chaotic scenarios people can only hope for a glimmer of meaning or clarity to emerge, so it's fully justifiable that Angela and her intrepid cameraman are kept (literally) in the dark. Besides, even in terms of achieving a successful narrative tension, it's far more exciting not to know what's going on - in that pandemonium of unpredictability lies the true horror.

Already remade as Quarantine in the US, I hope John Erick Dowdle manages to retain the vitality of the original. With America producing an increasing number of films about 'attacks' and 'events' (I wonder what that's all about), [Rec] has just the right amount of paranoid anxiety to slot right in to a culture apparently preparing itself for oblivion.