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Another week, another Spanish horror movie to show Hollywood how it should be done. [REC] is as tense and unnerving a horror film as there has been for some time. The timing of the film's release on these shores is in some ways unfortunate (although handy for marketing purposes) in that it's the third film in as many months to boast an entirely handheld-camera aesthetic - the others being Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead. It means that [REC] doesn't seem as innovative as it would've had it been released last year, as it was in its Spanish homeland. Nevertheless, after the film's brief 80-minute runtime has lapsed and you stumble bleary-eyed and twitchy out of the cinema, it's clear that this is a quality entry in the genre. The primary goal of any self-respecting horror film is to scare and this does as good a job as any such film of recent times.
Wisely, [REC] doesn't spend much time on building characters that only exist to add to the body count; there's a brief set-up, introducing the idea that this is a documentary following the exploits of the night shift in a fire station, followed by the emergency alarm call that sets everything into motion. Despite the fact that we barely get to know any of the characters, they do come across like real people and not cardboard cutouts designed purely for the purposes of a horror film. In the brief snapshots of character that we are provided with we glimpse some touches of humanity that seem spontaneous, such as the bickering old couple. Indeed, one of [REC]'s greatest feats is that it manages to feel completely unstaged, and the naturalistic acting helps a lot.
The actual action does not actually begin for a surprisingly long amount of time given the film's brief duration, but the buildup is unfailingly tense and well-judged, with a couple of good jumps scattered through the early stages. But when blood and body parts start to fly, that's when the adrenaline starts pumping and the intensity does not let up. None of the characters are safe and there's no clear-cut order of dispatch due to the virtually non-existent character development (which would normally be a flaw but works entirely to this film's advantage) and the fact that, at least to non-Spanish audiences, none of these faces will be familiar. As the stakes are raised, the lights go out, which means that the only source of illumination is from the camera. Soon, even the camera's light is broken, and thereafter everything is seen in green night vision mode, leading to an incredibly nerve-shredding climax. [REC] isn't flawless - it ends rather too abruptly, and the shaking of the camera reaches epileptic proportions even early on before the situation becomes desperate. Nevertheless, it's a supremely effective, well-thought-out shocker.
The summary
Like Cloverfield, motion sickness sufferers should avoid [REC], but horror fans should flock to it.
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