REC Review

Another found footage film! I’d never seen this film until a few days a go despite hearing a lot about it and watching Quarantine which is the Americanized version of it. For some reason I’d just never fancied it, maybe for the silly reason that I did not like the American remake. When out shopping me and Mrs Acidburn noticed the REC trilogy on sale and thought sod it lets give it a go, it promptly sat on my horror DVD shelf for 6 months or more until we decided to give it a watch.

The film starts with a local news reporter and her camera man at a fire station, they are there to film a piece for their TV show on the everyday lives of fire fighters. The film builds up with these two getting shown round the station by the chief and shown all the more boring parts of life as a firefighter. Angela Vidal the TV host really wants something to happen although she’s warned that most of the time it’s things like rescuing cats from trees.

During a game of basketball she gets her wish as a call comes in about a woman trapped in her apartment. Angela, her camera man and two firefighters rush to the fire engine and drive to the apartment building, where two police officers are waiting along with the rest of the residents. This isn’t a cat in a tree, in fact its probably as far from that as is possible.

Once there the fire men and the TV crew break into the apartment to rescue the woman. However after rescuing her instead of being thankful she decides to munch someones face off, the rest of the film is a very tense account of what happens as the building is shut off and one by one people start to get infected and go nuts.

The Positives

Where do I start? There’s quite a few great aspects to this film. Most important is the atmosphere the film creates, from the moment they arrive at the apartment building things are obviously tense and when the authorities decide to quarantine the building, not allowing anyone to get out things get really nervy.

The effects are top notch in this film, all the make up on the zombies (think 28 Days Later rather than Night of the Living Dead) is realistic and the injured(bitten) people look great.

The chase scenes are great as the camera shakes all over the place apart from the main character you really think there’s a chance that anyone could die at any time. This is at it’s best in the final scene when the camera is turned to night vision as the survivors (up to that point) try to escape the clutches of a great looking zombie.

Sorry Mr Firefighter no one gives a crap about you

The Negatives

I loved this film but no film is perfect. The poorest aspect of this film was character development, it really was just a bunch of people I was waiting to see get killed. There was no sympathy for any character and although one of the fire fighters named Manu, was pretty good there was no connection to anyone in the film barring the main character and maybe her side kick.

I like the found footage genre but I could understand someone watching this and disliking the amount the camera wobbles around (what do you expect when you’re filming yourself being chased by zombies who want to eat your face) it doesn’t bother me at all but more fussy people may dislike it.

Although the end scene was tense it leaves a lot of questions and I’m not sure these will be answered in the sequel. If they aren’t I’ll be slightly annoyed so that’s got to be a negative for this film.

 

I consider REC to be one of the very best found footage films I’ve watched. From the moment they set foot in the apartment building right until the end it is a tense film, filled with a decent amount of blood and guts. It’s made me excited to watch the sequels but are they just a cash in or they actually good? I’m sure you’ll find out on here if you haven’t seen them yourself yet!

Overall Score