Rec (Single Disc Edition) [DVD]

This one's a bit of a curate's egg for me to be honest.

I've been searching for a really scary horror film that creeps me out the same way classic Asian horror films and "Blair Witch" did. I've been true-fright-free now for a couple of years and the current celluloid trend for questionable torture-porn/gore-no is something I deliberately choose to avoid.
Anyway, after several recommendations I arrived at "Rec"

Yes, admittedly the PoV thing is generally overdone. Personally I can never see any reason for a character continuing to film in situations of fear and terror and as we see more films using this technique the more tenuous it becomes as a device. Surely it would be the last thing on your mind but finally here we have a film where the continuation of filming is 90% believable. "Rec" starts as a documentary until things start to go downhill. The inclusion of real TV presenter Manuela Velasco as the main character (Angela) is clever but obviously means little to those of us who don't watch Spanish television.
As events take a turn for the worse, Angela's insistent demands (for the unseen Pablo) to "keep filming" are reason enough to keep the PoV going. Later on several static, accidental and incidental shots reinforce this illusion effectively and later still the camera becomes a tool rather than just our surrogate eye.

So having effectively conquered the "keep filming" issue Rec is free to indulge itself and to crank up the tension. Sadly (for me) after an intial peak I found the survival horror element slightly less than original and in danger of becoming "same old, same old". I actually caught myself thinking "oh no..not xxxxxxx again".
It's probably all my fault for being too old and having seen far too many films of this genre already.
At one point the film became a hybrid of that genre and the brilliant "Right At Your Door" and I was immersed again until the inevitable "ten little indians" structure restablished itself and proceeded to whittle down the remaining cast members.

Now..... having said all this I must add...it's carried off with style, great ensemble (re)acting from an almost unknown cast and more importantly all done at a cracking pace. This pace is the film's trump card as far as I'm concerned. Yes I did experience deja-vu but the speed of events catapaults you past all this, without pause for breath, into the brilliant last 15-20 minutes where......

......finally the film began to properly scare me.
Growing trepidation, piecing together of plot elements and discovered clues you realize the horrid truth of the situation and then all of a sudden you catch a glimpse of....................well that would be telling.

The final section saved the film for me and is the major reason for four stars. Yet again proof that thinking for yourself and not-seeing is much better than the reliance upon blood and gore of the film's middle section.

So as I said earlier, a curate's egg.... good in parts...........and actually very, very good in some of them.

Whilst the roots of the 'hand held horror' film can be traced back as far as Cannibal Holocaust it was The Blair Witch Project that kicked started the craze properly.
After the phenomenal success of BWP a slew of horror films such as Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and Diary of The Dead littered the video stores but for me REC is the best of the bunch.
Don't be put off by the fact that it's Spanish and with subtitles (unless you understand fluent Spanish which means you should enjoy the film even more).
Whilst filmed on a budget it does not show and all of the cast perform superbly.
It's a short film (77 minutes) with a fairly slow build up but those final 20 minutes or so are quite terrifying.
Watched under the right circumstances (at night, with the lights off, the sound up loud and preferably on your own) this film will scare the crap out of you.
I watched it during the middle of the day and it still had me jumping and I'm a veteran horror film watcher of over 40 years.
Highly recommended. Just don't be tempted to watch the US remake entitled "Quarantine". The original version is far superior.

A TV documentary crew (well a cameraman and a reporter) are doing a piece on what happens at a fire station on the night shift when they get a call from a woman who is trapped in her flat. They then end up trapped themselves when the building is placed under quarantine, leaving them stuck inside with the tenants...and not not all the tenants are exactly human anymore.

Shot in a hand held first person style in the same way as Cloverfield this is a really good film although to get the most out of it you need to watch it on your own, in the dark, with the sound cranked up. Once the action starts it barely lets up and the final half hour is fairly relentless and filled with tension.

Well written and well filmed and even though it's all shot hand held it doesn't suffer from "shaky cam" like others shot in the same way.

If you are one of those people who can't handle subtitles ( the film is Spanish) then it has been through the remake grinder despite being only a few years old & has been released as Quarantine but what that's like I can't say as I really have no interest in watching that version.

A great movie that will have you on the edge of your seat.