[REC] (2007)

Written by Nick Da Costa | Wednesday, April 9, 2008 |

Disaster movies, comic book movies, endless remakes. Hollywood’s dearth of imagination has left us with a stale, cyclical movie industry and in terms of the horror genre it’s once again the time of cinéma-vérité or docu-drama. Films like ‘Cloverfield’ and Romero’s ‘Diary of the Dead’ have breathed new life into the style last seen to any success in ‘The Blair Witch Project‘. But with new Spanish flick [REC], they’ve upped the ante, producing something of such terrifying depths that it will leave you reeling.

Directors Placo Plaza and Jaume Balaguero have made a horror masterpiece. That’s as emphatic as I can be without dribbling on into hyperbole. From the in media res opening that introduces us to news reporter Angela (Manuela Velasco) to the spine-chilling chaos that closes the film the filmmakers do a quite fantastic job of making us believe that all the events we are seeing onscreen are real. This is not even cinéma-vérité. Forget the cinema. This is film to lose yourself in completely. It is truly a horrifying experience.

Unlike other films of this sub-genre the plot feels organic to the concept. This is not some faux-documentary or the best friend with a camera; it’s a familiar aspect of our lives: the News. Using that familiarity the filmmakers lull us into a false sense of security. By opening on an almost somnambulistic interview with firemen about the tedious minutiae of their profession they then start to build the tension, taking Angela, the cameraman and her entourage to a call at an elderly woman’s apartment where reports of a disturbance turns out to be something really rather nasty.

And that’s when the mood shifts, and it’s reflected beautifully by the camera. It becomes our heartbeat. It becomes part of us, as it watches the strange events from afar or slammed in horrifically close, jostled by another character or jarred temporarily out of focus by an object. This coupled with a soundtrack that does away almost entirely with non-diegetic sound, and instead incorporates natural sound to create a hellish cacophony; the screech of a metal blind, the howl of distant animals, the guttural roar of the monsters, all perfectly pitched to disorientate the audience which is really the film’s main aim. It doesn’t simply frighten you, it batters you senseless with a combination of adrenaline pumping chase scenes, slow-burn tension set pieces, and some well deserved and genuine heart in the throat, boo scares (look out for the falling body and the surprise in the attic).

This is not to say that the film is mere blunt instrument. This is not simply a soulless ‘ride’. Surprisingly considering the nature of this new super cinéma-vérité, there is a definite sense of characterisation or at least creative improvisation. There are even signs of them weaving a subtext into the movie. While it’s a delight to watch the wonderfully bubbly Valesco at the beginning of the movie, it’s a shock to see her whimpering in fear as things start to deteriorate. All of this brilliantly conveyed in a performance that’s belies the ‘ride’ element of the film. Similarly, for such a short movie, there’s a surprising amount of substance to the story, the film paying homage to the films of Romero with its portrayal of the military as just as much a monster as the ones the group face inside the locked down apartment block.

Of course with any film that builds and builds layer upon layer of tension, there are moments where the grip slips slightly, and criticism finds a hold, but in the case of this film, it’s minor. Sure, there are moments shortly before the climax where things start to feel a little bit contrived, almost videogame in its attempts to move people into certain positions; the very thing they need to escape agonisingly out of reach. Similarly, as things get completely out of hand the media’s responsibility to record events is surely superseded by the need to stay alive (drop the damn camera), but these are fairly moot when your heart is racing and you’re more involved with a film than you have been in years.

In fact, with a climax that melds the final moments of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘The Blair Witch Project’, with Chris Cunningham’s worst nightmare to utterly gruesome perfection, a critic’s position becomes completely inconsequential. Watch this film. Ignore the inevitable and planned remake with its himbo and bimbo of the moment and its feeble attempts to capture even a modicum of the original’s power. Quite simply, be a part of something that makes the Masters of Horror look like mewling amateurs.

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