[REC]

[REC] (2007)

Directed by: Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza

Starring: Manuela Velasco, Pablo Rosso

Plot:While covering the night shift at a small-town fire department, an ambitious young television reporter (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman follow the crew on a call to rescue an elderly woman(Matt Frew) trapped in her apartment. Upon their arrival at the scene, the calm midnight air is pierced by the sound of horrific screams, and the television report takes an unexpectedly dark turn. Taken from www.imdb.com

"Help! Wilford Brimley is chasing me, he keeps telling me to check my blood sugar, he won't stop!"

Two types of movies are very popular in the horror genre right now. Movies from the "point of view" type of filming (ex. "Cloverfield", "The Poughkeepsie Tapes", "Diary of the Dead") and zombie movies (2004's "Dawn of the Dead", "28 Days Later", "Diary of the Dead", "Land of the Dead".) "[REC]" is a movie that has the audacity to be both. Fortunately Spanish filmmaker Jaume Balaguero knows what he's doing.

The film starts out introducing us to Angela (Manuela Velasco) for all intensive purposes the "heroine" of this film though much like in Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead after it, the main character is really more the rarely seen Pablo (Pablo Rasso) the cameraman. They are working on a late night schedule filler of a show called "While You're Asleep" working with a group of firemen on night shift when they get called out to help an old woman trapped in her apartment Pablo and Angela go with them.

Things seem to be worse than imagined as the police are already at the scene when the firemen arrive. They investigate the apartment and find the woman, bloody and screaming, she quickly bites one of the policemen on the neck and they rush the man downstairs to find that the building has been put under quarantine. You can guess where things go from there.

Just let this image sit in your mind for a while, you know what, go ahead and make it your background.

The acting, while not an important detail in this movie, is very well done. You really do feel that you are watching real people in a real situation. No parts particularly stick out, but from the bickering old couple to the middle aged gay man complaining about his Chinese neighbors and the smells that come from their home you feel like these are just everyday normal people, not characters in a movie.

My one complaint is the character Angela who will not shut her goddamn trap throughout the course of the film, constantly she keeps talking when clearly she should not and is often shushed by Pablo over and over again.

Zombie movies and cute little girls don't mesh well...

The make-up effects in this movie aren't really an important showpiece as the camera rarely shows them long enough to make them that noticeable. Usually it's just a little fake blood, maybe a small prosthesis to give the impression that someone has been bitten. But on the few rare occasions the film allows itself to be gorey, it shines.

Of course the inevitable neck-biting is the first effect in the film and as always it looks real enough, but who can't make it look like someone's getting their jugular ripped out at this point? The above make-up of the fireman's face and the movie's finale show some truly horrifying make-up that looks real and incredibly disturbing. Few of the zombies have much in the way of make-up rather than white contacts and some fake blood on their mouth.

Ferran Terraza impersonates Vin Diesel.

The storyline is nothing new. An apartment building is infected with some sort of zombie virus and the people inside are trapped with it and no way out as they begin dying one by one. It's not the story that's told that's ground breaking here, it's how it's told.

We learn the entire story as it happens, the filmmakers know that we all know what a zombie is at this point so it doesn't waste a lot of time explaining them to us. The zombies are a sort of mixture between that of the ones in "28 Days Later" and those invented by George A. Romero in "Night of the Living Dead."

The film takes a few cues from the classics as well as contemporary films like 2004's "Dawn of the Dead" with a few scenes that seem more than familiar. It also kicks things into new territory with hints of some sort of demonic possession that was the cause of all of this, but none of this is ever confirmed, merely left for the viewer to speculate.

The zombies are nothing short of horrifying, the run and attack with superhuman strength letting loose the most horrifying and other wordly screams as they do. The film makes good use of the dark and makes sure we piss our pants every time the lights come back on.

"[REC]" is the first film I have seen since I was a child that gave me a genuine sense of dread. You know what's going to happen but that doesn't make it any easier for you, the film makes you jump constantly and it's never just a cat or someone laying their hand on someone's shoulder, when the film causes you fly from your seat in fear screaming like a 5-year-old girl, it does so with real danger. I honestly spent the last 30 or so minutes peeking through my fingers and even though I knew what was about to happen (and I was right on the money every time) it scared the bejeezus out of me. This is what makes "[REC]" so wonderful, you know you're going to be scared, you know what's going to happen, and yet that doesn't save you, you'll still be terrified even if you do know exactly what's around the next corner.

And honestly the last 10 minutes is the most horrifying part of the film, the good old tried and true night vision part is utilized in a way that it always should have been. If the ending of "The Blair Witch" had been done this way it would have been a much scarier film. The scene is predictable as most of the movie is but still manages to be genuinely chilling.

I told you cute little girls and zombie movies don't mesh together well.

This movie is the way that horror should be done more often. A truly profound horror movie and yet another wonderfully done Spanish film. Unfortunately, finding this movie Stateside is nigh-impossible, currently the only way it's gonna happen is to import a Spanish DVD and watch it on a region-free DVD player.

You see, Hollywood is topping it's own record by remaking a movie that was released LAST YEAR! If any of this review has seemed familiar this is because you've probably seen the previews for the upcoming remake "Quarantine" while I do find it hard to imagine that even Hollywood could screw up a movie with such a simple formula I have to remind myself that we're the country that screwed up "Doom."

Chances are that the movie studios are just holding off the Region 1 DVD release of [REC] until Quarantine is well out of theaters to avoid comparison (which is probably a good idea on their part) but hopefully we'll be seeing it sometime next year.

I give [REC] a 5 out of 5. It's a must have (as soon as you actually can find the damn thing.)