Recommendation of the Week (10/07): Rec and Rec 2

You can forget your Paranormal Activities and your Cloverfields, for true visceral found footage horror look no further than this terrifying twosome of Spanish language films released over the last couple of years.

The premise is simple enough; the first movie begins with a nice TV journalist conducting an expose of the lives of firefighters as a segment of the program ‘while you are asleep’. She flirts and bonds and then they get a call. The TV crew follows the firemen to an apartment building where the police are struggling to open a door to an old lady’s apartment because the old lady has seemingly gone bonkers. They get the door open and the old lady has indeed lost it, but she seems to have an uncontrollable temper and has gotten a bit bitey (think the infected from 28 days later). The crew manage to fend off the lunatic but find that suddenly the building has been sealed from the outside due to this infection and they can’t get out.

The infection spreads and the TV crew, firemen and remaining tenants of the building have to struggle to stay alive. The whole thing is incredibly intense despite a bit of a sag in the action halfway through. Its really violent and makes you jump right out of your seat but not in a telegraphed way.

The found footage format allows the directors Jaume Balugera and Paco Plaza to move the camera so that the audience has no idea when or where the next shock will come from. This all leads to one of the most unbearably intense finales I’ve ever seen in a horror film. I won’t spoil it but it involves night vision in a dark room with something that looks disturbing as hell.

The sequel picks up the action right where we left off with a SWAT team entering the building to search for survivors along with a priest who knows more than he initially lets on. This allows the camera action some variety in that each of the team has a camera mounted to their helmet. The swat team are attacked by the infected cast of the first movie and the infection spreads some more.

Meanwhile a gang of teenagers, also conveniently with a camera; break into the building through the sewers and get caught up in the slaughter. The increase in firepower allows for far more gory death’s including death by firework which is both hilarious and macabre.

The best thing about the sequel though is how it builds on the revelations in the final act of the first movie and while doing so becomes the best film of its type since, well since The Exorcist really. The ending is a major kicker which should lead further into Rec 3 & 4 which are being filmed as I write this. I for one cannot wait to see how they expand the mythology further still with a wider canvas to play on.

In the recent boom of found footage thrillers, these films are far and away the best. The Rec films are not just the fast moving zombie films they appear to be on the surface. Many people have not seen them due to the fact they are in Spanish and subtitled. Don’t let that put you off.  These films are just about the most blood thirsty fun you can have in a room with the lights off.

by Chris Holt

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