[REC]

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: A-
DVD Features Grade: B+
Overall Grade: A-

Being a huge horror fan myself I had previously heard of [REC] but not a great deal. My knowledge of the movie was so limited that I didn’t even understand why it was called [REC]; which actually referees to the abbreviation for record on most video cameras for anyone who is curious. Yes it’s another video camera based movie which was remade into Quarantine in 2008. That was a big year for video camera movie in the US because both Quarantine and Cloverfield were released several months apart.

[REC] begins as a normal story for Angela Vidal (Manuela Valaseco) who is covering the nightlife of a city firefighter. Her and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) find themselves hoping that there will be some action that night to spice up their story. When the alarm sounds and they all head out Angela and Pablo are ecstatic but quickly learn to lament their decision to tag along. The building they arrive at is placed under quarantine and they are left inside with no knowledge of the horrors waiting for them a few flights up.

There hasn’t been a movie of this style as well executed and chilling as The Blair Witch Project. Despite the under-appreciation of The Blair Witch Project it is, in my opinion, one of the most frightening movie I have ever seen. Not the best horror film ever but it would probably fall somewhere with in my top ten along with the greats like The Shining, Night of the Living Dead and Halloween.

Every aspect of the film production was done so immaculately it is almost uncanny. They take full advantage of the idea that the camera is vulnerable to its surrounds by having issues with sound fading in and out, rapid movement, loss of video; and probably best of all, skipping out on scenes that we just don’t have to see. Also the lack of music is something a lot of modern horror movies are taking into consideration which gives a feeling of solitude and a more realistic environment. There is only one instance in the fill where there is non-diegetic sound and that is in the end sequence when there is are very subtle sounds added to the background.

After seeing George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead I felt somewhat outraged and said that having a video camera zombie film was just a bad idea. I must have just been making excuses because unless you jumped ahead to this paragraph you should know by now that this is one of my favorite horror films for the past few years. The new idea of zombies may have lost some of its appeal being that they are slow but have great numbers and now they have lost a weakness, but films like this and 28 Days Later do it with such grace that it doesn’t matter how poorly movies like Land of ...