Sunday 23 October 2011

[Rec]

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:2007
Country of origin:Spain
Director:Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Genre:Zombie intensity
Starring:Manuela Velasco, Ferran Terraza, Jorge Serrano, Pablo Rosso
Rating:5/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038988/
Tagline:One Witness. One Camera.
Favourite line:N/A - Subtitled

As a long time horror devotee, I’ve given more man hours over to consuming and digesting scary fare than is normal, perhaps even healthy.
Whilst enjoying most horror output, I feel that I have become a little hardened to the material to the point that, whilst normally entertained, I am seldom frightened by a movie. But every so often, a movie like [Rec] comes along and simply scares the bejeesus suffering Christ out of me.
Echoing Audition, a truly superb slice of J-Horror, this is a subtitled movie that I went into completely blind. All I knew about it was that it received rave reviews and that it had been praised for its no nonsense, stripped down nature.
And what a movie.

The plot:
A female news reporter is filming a piece in a provincial fire station, talking to the crew, asking them about an average day and hoping for an emergency call to add a little spice to her report.
A call duly comes in: an elderly lady is locked in her apartment and people have heard screams from within.
The fire crew bust the door open and the accompanying police officers go in first, approaching the lady who is standing in a corner covered in blood. They try to calm her and, just as it seems they are making progress, she strikes, launching herself at the policeman and literally biting his cheek off before setting to work on one of the firemen. After subduing her, the team head downstairs to get out of the building only to discover that the exits have been blocked and more police units are attending, insisting that everyone remains inside. It soon transpires that some form of medical emergency has been declared, an outbreak of a virulent virus that transforms anyone affected into slavering, flesh hungry deviants that is spread by contact with saliva.

Yep, it’s the old rampaging zombie tale once more, but handled with such style it feels fresh and exciting and, crucially, ball-crunchingly creepy.
The movie is shot in a documentary style, the lens of the cameraman shooting the news report the conduit through which we view proceedings, lending it a sense of realism that simply serves to bring the extraordinary events even closer to home.
Filmed in Spanish, the frenzied, excitable nature of the native language only adds to the ambience as characters argue and panic, barely seeming to pause for breath between sentences. With the Italian horror scene seemly a thing of the past, maybe it’s the Spaniards turn to show the rest of us how to make scary movies.
Quite simply one of the finest horror movies I have ever seen.

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