[⚫REC]

Released: 2008
Director: Jaume Balagueró
Cast: Manuela Velasco; Pablo Rosso; Ferrán Terraza; David Vert

[⚫REC] is another film in the 'reality cinema' category – like Cloverfield (made around the same time) and, if you remember it, The Blair Witch Project – in which we are presented with 'found footage' recovered in the aftermath of some sort of disaster. Everything we see is through a hand-held camera with a shakiness that's meant to make it 'real'. Although on a large screen this might give you motion sickness, it does lend it a surface reality which is intended to draw us in and heighten the scariness. Have to say, that didn't really work for me, but despite that I did really like this film. So did a lot of other people: it was popular with the critics, won a couple of Goyas (although it won a lot more awards at the Catalonian Film Festival, surprise, surprise) and is probably the most internationally well-known Spanish horror film, it's already spawned the predictable, shot-for-shot American remake.

Anyway, to the story... Ángela, a young, enthusiastic and inexperienced TV presenter together with a single cameraman, Pablo is shadowing the night shift in a Barcelona fire station for an episode of Mientras ustedes duermen (While You're Sleeping). For a while it's deliberately dull with Ángela appearing increasingly desperate for an emergency and some decent footage. Finally, she gets her wish and the crew respond to a call about an elderly woman trapped and shouting in her apartment. They meet the police there and in they go, deal with the various inhabitants of the building and then it's upstairs to see about the poor old lady. Without giving too much away, soon after this, the biting starts and suddenly we're into a classic zombie virus situation, complicated and contained by the fact that the authorities are remarkably efficient and have sealed the entire building (it's a bio-emergency, folks) before they can all run downstairs screaming and out into the street.

The scariest film ever, as the box says? Well, no. Not for me anyway. Quite scary in places, a few make-you-jump moments, and some nice tension-building at the start while we're wondering how will it all kick off but all told, it didn't raise my heart rate that much and I think the problem may be that because of the hand-held camera conceit, it just doesn't feel that real.

This might seem an odd statement given the 'realistic' premise of a single, unpolished viewpoint. However, cinematic reality (as opposed to real reality, whatever that is) is whatever we are used to seeing. Which is to say, the usual camera angles and shots and so forth which try to immerse the viewer in the action. By offering a viewpoint so different to the norm, [⚫REC] points up the unreality of all cinema and – by extension – of itself too. It therefore creates a separation between the viewer and the viewed which prevented me from buying into the film's reality which prevented me from identifying with events and characters on-screen and, ultimately, from caring. And if you don't care, you can't be scared.

Or at least, that's my pseudo-intellectual rationalisation for why I wasn't hiding behind the dog, whimpering with fear and wishing we'd watched The Sound of Music instead (although, to be fair, that is a scary movie!)

At 75 minutes, it's quite a short film and that works to its credit. Hollywood can overdo the repetition in this sort of plot with too many narrow escapes and chase scenes as the (often teenage) cast are picked off one by one. There's certainly some picking-off here, but each scene adds something to the story and it's never overly drawn out. Once we're in the building the pace is fast and remains so right to the end. Good ending too, and the right one, given the circumstances.

So, if you want constant, pants-wetting terror I can't recommend it (although many others have for just that) but if you want an intelligent, interesting zombie film (with a very interesting twist when we find out where the virus came from) with some good scares then I can. And I do.

Apparently, there's a sequel ([⚫REC]2) which picks up directly where the first finishes. It's similarly claustrophobic and at just 85 minutes, you could quite comfortably watch them as a double bill.