Review: [REC]
Despite the number of films I’ve seen over the years I tend to remember which ones I’ve seen, even if I don’t remember anything about them other than a ‘Yay or Nay’ thought. Until I found an old review for it, I could’ve sworn I’d never seen [REC] before, I’ve definitely seen the 2nd one because I saw that first in the background of a friends party so I had no context as to what was happening and I’ve seen the remake Quarantine but I’d forgotten about watching this completely.
Looking back at my initial review and seeing again with fresh eyes I am slightly warmer to some parts of the film than I was back then but I’m still not seeing the hype on this at all.
The film opens with reporter Angela Vidal and her cameraman Pablo doing a late night segment following one of Barcelona’s Fire Stations on a night in their lives. The station is called out to help an elderly woman trapped in her apartment so Angela and Pablo tag along with fire-fighter Manu on a seemingly easy shift, they arrive to find police have gathered the apartment residents downstairs although nobody has been told why.
Things quickly take bad turn when the woman becomes aggressively and nearly kill one of the police officers, when the other officers try to take him to seek medical help they find the building has been quarantined off and everyone inside has to stay inside until further notice. With everyone confused, scared and angry, the fight to find a way outside or figure out what’s going on takes place between the residents and the officials with Angela desperate to film everything as a way to show everyone just how desperate the situation is.
The short length of the film – clocking in just over 75 minutes – both enhances and cripples the story, on the one hand it allows the film to have very little fat on it, aside from a little dip in the middle where Angela interviews the residents which admittedly does allow for some nice levity but goes on slightly too long before the madhouse sprint in the final half hour. On the other hand being that short does mean that a few pieces feel missing, I can understand for this type of film why skipping a few beats makes sense, the characters find an obstacle, someone thinks of a solution, something jumps outs and yells, survivors rush to overcome the obstacle. It’s a simple formula but when it happens 3 or 4 times within a 20 minute period it becomes hard to take seriously, not helped by the nature of being found-footage made the film difficult to effectively keep track off, again I can understand the lack of cohesion adding to the tension but I was mostly turned off by it.
Characters were basically a non-entity, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing, we’re essentially told straight up that our focus should stick with Angela and the film mostly succeeds at that but given the amount of people involved it felt counterproductive having so many characters basically being Red-Shirts. That’s not to say there wasn’t a few standout, Manu basically took charge once it was clear that Officials had no clue what was going on and his short fuse and violent temperament were welcome additions to the film, little girl Jennifer was cute in the way horror movies make children before making them all sinister and shit and another resident - I think his name was Caesar but I’m not sure – had some funny moments of vanity and casual racism.
But outside of them there was several police officers, a medical intern, an Asian family, Jennifer’s mother, an elderly couple, a health inspector and maybe another family, I’m not 100% sure, that all get sidelined into little more than shouting when the shit hits the fan. Even Pablo despite having a name is just the man behind the camera, although he does put it down a couple times to help out so fair play on that. I don’t want to sound like I’m ragging on the film for not giving everyone a three act structure, I can appreciate a few obvious future corpses in a horror film, my problem is that there’s too many of them, the film’s conscious choice to have this be the beginning of an outbreak is undone by the fact that the first half of the film is spent with a bunch of folk you already know aren’t going to make it but you’re stuck with them until the outbreak actually happens.
To the film’s credit I did like Angela, the opening to the film where she’s trying to film her opening and stumbling over her lines did endear her slightly and despite her insistence that the camera be kept running at all times she was proactive and did try to help when she could, even if running away was the safer option. I know Angela comes back in later films so I’m interested to see where they go with her because they’ve set up good ground work for her here.
Directors Jaume Balageuro and Paco Plaza do an admirably job but personally I found a mixed bag in the results. I’ve already touched upon the middle act dip which I still maintain last way too long, especially for a film as short as this, to be waiting that long for everything to kick back into action is just flat out ridiculous. Plus to be honest the film just isn’t scary, and I’m not saying that just because I’ve watched 1000 horror movies, there’s just very little in the way of building tension. They try to a couple times with infected standing motionless but that’s just a countdown to a jump-scare and they don’t count because jump-scares are shit, the closest they ever come is at the ending in the penthouse and they find the room with all the newspapers, that did send a slight chill down my spine but it was very slight.
But credit where its due, when the film worked it was pretty good, a few moments of sudden violence – a body falling from the stairs, someone spitting blood onto someone else – were utilised well to keep you on your toes and while I still think there should’ve been more to it, that final half hour sprint where everything kicks off is a good shot of adrenaline with the found footage angel being used best here to keep up a consistent level of confusion. Plus as much as a problem as I had with the residents all waiting around to become infected, I did like how there was an undercurrent of the officials knowing something more was going on but not 100% sure what, it was slight but noticeable to give a mystery vibe to the whole thing.
In truth though, I’m probably good forgetting about [REC] again though hopefully this time I won’t. The parts of it I liked are undercut but the parts I don’t, the brisk pace of the story is let down by a sharp slap on the brakes that drops the momentum in the second act, the simple but memorable characters are overrun by nameless nobodies who only serve to die off-screen and the confusing, manic craze of being in the middle of an outbreak, trying to find the few places of safety is shafted by the film’s fruitless attempts to build tension when there’s none to be found.
I am going to stick with the franchise to see how it adapts going forward, but for all the praise this opening chapter got, I just don’t see the big deal about it.
6/10