Cast: Manuela Velasco

Director: Jamie Balaguero

Screenplay: Jamie Balaguero

Genre: Horror

Running time: 1 hr 30 mins



CRITIQUE:


Is this one of the best horror movies of all-time? It’s excruciating to ignore its spook-factor and insensible to call it a contemporary classic for [REC] (or Record) takes a post-modernist approach to the genre, borrowing themes from George A. Romero’s zombie flicks and the pseudo-realist atmosphere of groundbreaking THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. However, it cannot and should not be deprived of being a cinema verité. With all its realism, audience know straight away as soon as they see the charming and feisty Spanish actress Manuela Velasco reporting for the faux show “When You’re Sleeping” about firefighters and their headquarters on a supposed-to-be uneventful night, this is the journalistic approach to witnessing horrific events, captured by a reporter’s cameraman strategies and the thirst for breaking news. This lies beside the Youtube-generation embraced by the stunning CLOVERFIELD, that momentous events are actually captured by ordinary people with camera phones and shaky camera works, or documentarians in the gobsmacking THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and not-so-impressive DIARY OF THE DEAD, Romero’s latest and unending addition to his undead franchise.


Resultantly, and quite gladly with such manic glee, [REC] is effective. In fact, if you crave for realistic depictions of videographic disorientation, then you’re in the right dark alley of terror and claustrophobia. One journalist’s humdrum of reporting turns insane and terrorising as they are pulled into a maelstrom of horrific events, being locked up in an apartment complex as a virus breaks out in the building. What ensues is an execution of such compelling believability, as the threads are pulled together in the plot, inhabitants start eating each other’s flesh. Albeit it feels staged, it employs a stylish atmosphere, a sort that one experiences in a horror-house with no way out. It also has a finale that will grip you, barely unleash you to breathe as the survivors run around the building finding a place to hide – plus an epilogue that’s unsettling, bordering the supernatural realm with added night-vision factor that’s as nightmarish as your scariest fantasy. We know this is audience manipulation, but movies like this manipulate audience extremely well. Kudos to new horrormeister Jamie Balaguero.



VERDICT:

Put this on a lacklustre night, turn off all the lights, amp up the volume, and prepare for an all-out-scare. It is terrifying as it is convincing, engaging as it is disorientating. [REC] is an almost perfectly staged horror-house of a film.



RATING: A-