Movie Review – [Rec]

[Rec] (2007)
Written by Paco Plaza, Luis A. Berdejo, and Jaume Balagueró
Directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza

If you have read my reviews for a few years, you know I am not a big fan of the found footage subgenre of horror. When Blair Witch came out in 1999, I was a neophyte: a homeschooled little weirdo going into his freshman year at a private Christian college. The Sixth Sense terrified me at the time. However, in the subsequent 20-plus years, I have seen thousands more films and matured in my sensibilities regarding horror. I find films like Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity excruciatingly dull. Part of the found footage concept is that the audience must be convinced of the “reality” of the story, and to do that, you need long periods of boring, mundane scenes. The horror is contained in microchunks or held back until the very end. I’d heard people claim the Spanish language horror film [Rec] was different, that it was good, so I decided to check it out.

Angela Vidal is a TV news reporter in Barcelona, where she does a series about people who work while the majority are asleep. Tonight, she’s embedded at a fire station alongside her cameraman, Pablo. Things are pretty dull; they shoot lots of footage of the building and chat with the firefighters. Finally, a call comes in, bringing Angela & Pablo to an apartment building where an elderly woman is said to be trapped inside her home. Things turn dark when the unresponsive woman suddenly attacks a police officer and tears out his throat. Shortly after this, the military quarantines the building and tells everyone inside they will not be allowed to leave. It becomes evident that something sinister is spreading throughout the building. Through the eyes of Angela & Pablo, we discover more about this mystery as people get picked off one by one.

I have to say I didn’t find [Rec] to be that spectacular of a horror film. I suppose it’s one of the better found footage films, but I still wasn’t scared. My suspension of disbelief in this genre is pretty low; thus, getting into the narrative is hard for me. While there’s an effort to make the horror mysterious and slowly trickle out bits of information while still being aloof, this is simply a zombie movie disguised as a demonic one. The people who get possessed behave no different than the frenzied zombies of 28 Days Later, and it’s only at the end we see something I would even remotely refer to as demonic. 

It’s not a bad movie, just an okay one. The runtime is a perfect 78 minutes, never overstaying its time. That means we jump into the action minutes into the film, and the pace keeps up. There’s always something new being revealed, and we’re constantly exploring new spaces in the apartment building. That said, some lulls are in its fast-pace because we never get a quiet moment. There’s not much time or effort put into character development for many of these characters, so I didn’t feel much when they were killed. Even our main characters suffering the wrath of the evil hiding in the apartment didn’t creep me out.

Part of my problem with found footage horror films is that they function in the same way amusement park rides do. The story is secondary to the sensory experience. We can see this in how the films are edited, the shaky handheld camerawork, and the limited time of the narrative. I always feel unsatisfied watching a found footage film; they are perpetually scratching the surface of their stories. Being someone who loves horror literature, I like it when we can go a bit deeper without ruining the mystique of horror. I think that’s why I prefer films like Suspiria (2018), Hereditary, and Midsommar. Those movies feel like dense novels to me. We can go deep into the story yet not have everything spelled out for us. The horror is based more on the tone being set than the hyper energy of a found footage flick.

In the last twenty minutes, we suddenly get an exposition dump in the form of an unexplored apartment. I wish this information had been meted out a little more along the way rather than being introduced just as the film ended. There’s a fascinating nugget of an idea where demon possession overlaps with communicable disease. I wish the found footage aspect hadn’t been there so we could just enjoy this as a standard horror flick. Nothing about the camera point of view added much to my viewing experience. I think it was handled as best as it could be but ultimately served as a distraction from a story with many exciting ideas. This final moment was the most intriguing part of the film, and the picture ended as soon as it was introduced. Most of the film is a camera whipping around with blurred images while we hear people scream. 

Horror in experimental forms is fascinating to me. Skinamarink is an exciting new way of exploring the atmosphere and dread in horror by shifting perspective. The difference between Skinamarink and [Rec] is coherence. The former was able to deliver a coherent while abstract narrative and leave me feeling horrified. [Rec] provides a reasonably cohesive narrative, but it’s caught up in the demand to be “real,” so it never feels authentic, but the framing device hinders the fantastical elements. I always feel like each found footage film I watch will be my last, but I give them a chance after chance. Perhaps I should stop because they aren’t scratching my personal horror itch.