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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
[REC] Spanish horror film REC finally hits our shores this week, two years after it rocked the Spanish box office, and about a year after it was remade for U.S. audiences as Quarantine, an execrable insurance write-off of a movie from which the original’s wit and Catholic plot elements were purged to make it safe for American teenagers. It’s too bad we had to wait till now to get REC on DVD as it is actually somewhat fun: a scrappy, brief, moderately clever shocker that skillfully creates atmosphere and suspense without the crutch of mood music. Clocking in at only 78 minutes, it delivers solid if derivative genre thrills, and makes for satisfying late-night viewing. Just don’t expect to remember much about it afterwards. REC uses the “found film” gimmick which was popularized by The Blair Witch Project. In REC, the footage we see is apparently recovered from the camera of a crew shooting the fictional television series While You Were Asleep. Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco), the pixie-eyed young host of the show, is interviewing firemen at their station one night when an emergency call comes in. She then accompanies them to a housing complex where neighbors have been complaining of loud noises coming from an old woman’s apartment. When the firemen enter the woman’s darkened hallway, they’re attacked. Soon the residents, emergency service personnel, and the television crew discover they can’t leave the building. Medical authorities have quarantined them inside to prevent the spread of a mysterious infection, whose bloody, cannibalistic effects will be familiar to anyone who has seen 28 Days Later. The “found film” stunt has an obvious attraction for horror directors. It allows them to get a lot of mileage out of a low budget, and the immediacy and situational ignorance it forces on the viewer can be very effective for generating scares. But often, as with Blair Witch Project, it never transcends mere gimmickry. Worse, it can lead to outright absurdity since the filmmakers usually have to go to ridiculous lengths to keep a cameraman glued to his lens despite a mounting death toll and extreme personal danger (Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, etc.). Directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza try to work around this by having Angela constantly bullying her cameraman to make sure he doesn’t stop recording. It’s also true that the filmmakers, like many who work in this genre, are probably trying to say something about how callous “reality” TV makes us, how media people care more about getting the scoop, or advancing their careers, than the human suffering they document. Whatever. When faced with a cleaver-wielding zombie, even the makers of NYC Prep would have dropped their cameras to defend themselves. Still, directors Balagueró and Plaza manage to create a creepy mood with limited resources, and the final moments in the penthouse—where the vaguely Catholic elements of the infection are hinted at—are especially effective. As the filmmakers boast in the DVD’s making-of documentary, they added no incidental music to the picture, proving that you don’t need a cheap score to keep a movie going at a cracking place while also eliciting smart thrills. The DVD
also includes options to watch the film in English and Spanish audio. My
Spanish viewing companion informs me that many of the translations in
the English subtitles are off, causing some of the political humor to be
lost. For instance, when some residents don’t obey a policeman, his
subtitled response translates as, “What am I speaking, Greek?” The
actual Spanish spoken is, “What am I speaking, Chinese?” —with this
remark being directed at Chinese immigrants.
Brendon Nafziger
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