Late night TV reporter Angela and her cameraman Pablo are attached to one of Barcelona's fire stations for an evening. The unit is called to a house where an old woman is seemingly loudly suffering in her apartment and they're needed to bust the door down. The woman is found covered in blood and one of the cops there with them gets mugged off and bit by the old biddy. They bail downstairs to get him medical help to find that the building has been sealed off for an infection scare after a resident's dog goes mental at the vet's. They realise that they can't get out, and when a fireman learns briefly and tragically that he cannot in fact fly having remained with the old woman, a few of them return upstairs to visit the septuagenarian. As is customary in these films, shit gets real. And undead. All the residents get toey as all hell and it turns into a race against time to get the hell out of there before the infection takes everyone.Now this film is entirely shot on Pablo's camera, which limits what you can see in the film to a brilliant extent. In a legit cinematic opus, it would be almost cheating to have scares creep up out of frame then nobble the camera from the flank, because the camera's not supposed to be part of the action (unless we're in a tacky POV mode). But when you know that the camera is being held by a character, there are no rules like this - you see what the characters see, and it's just as scary knowing that there could be something behind you or out of shot as it is seeing a zombified old lady on screen. The camera quality is late night TV sufficient, so there's never a sense of missing out, and the fact that the film's cinematographer Pablo Rosso acted as the cameraman means that its steady enough to show us the things the film-makers want us to see. The co-writers and co-directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are a phenomenal combination. Their treatment of the action is fresh and unexpected, there are twists and turns as what characters in the film actually know is revealed, and it is a great example of a movie that boils up to fever pitch then maintains a sense of utter terror for the last ten (or thereabouts) minutes. It could excellently exemplify exactly how to achieve a slow burn right - there's nothing to it for almost half an hour, then it achieves a status of mildly creepy once the apartment is broken into, but once the little girl with 'tonsillitis' goes AWOL it gets moderately batshit, and just when you thought it couldn't get any better it ramps it up to 'a sack full of rats on acid' insane when almost everyone in the whole fucking joint is infected.
The cast is highly believable for what they're portraying - normal people caught in a shitstorm where nothing makes any sense to a logical mind. Their desperation and confusion are especially well-played, and it's surprisingly believable as simply a legit found footage film. Acts of valour and sacrifice occur with perhaps unnatural regularity, but it's unsettling (in an entirely appropriate manner) that you never get the chance to mourn because it degenerates into such a kinetic thrill ride that you quickly move on. There's no non-diegetic sound, which means you're treated to long, god-awful patches of silence (when there's no one screaming...) which are broken sparingly to great effect with the stumbling of zombies or the cries of yet another victim.
And the ending, oh the ending... WARNING - SPOILERS MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. Trapped in the attic by a horde outside, Angela and Pablo are in darkness, seeing only what they light on the camera/night vision mode will allow them. And what they see is not pretty. Turns out the apartment is a Vatican science lab and the infection has some element of demonic possession to it. What's more, the little girl in whom the infection began decades ago is now an emaciated woman lurching about the attic. She is possibly the most haunting thing I have yet seen in my 18 years - just absolutely balls to the wall scary. This last five minutes is spent tensing yourself so hard you may have trouble going to the bathroom afterwards. And again, the last shot is just black-hearted (which prick can I blame for the lack of hope in horror endings?), and the final voice over is a wonderful summation of the whole flick's thematic tensions of perspective and committed journalism.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, the return of DJ Cheeky Wingz to triumphant form (Feat. the ever eloquent Susan).
DJ Cheeky Wingz's input:
Robyn Joffreys latest Portugese love story could be likened to Roald Dhal's thriller The Witches in that this movie revolves around the central plot which is really quite good. The main character who is French himself doesn't realise that she is being filmed the entire movie having the effect that a few times a giant inflamed woman with no abdomen and really long thin fingers appears on the screen in front of you and you can't help but stare right back at her as she screams into your face. Sometimes I thought I was fighting a war. Perhaps this movie would be good? But who are we to judge our friends. Maybe we could all go together and serve it in front of everybody. For this movie's efforts in removing the skin from underneath my fingernails I award it an unborn chicken foetus.
Susan's input:
recless woooo
Watch it. Just watch it and weep. An all-round stunning
ensemble effort which for me redefines how you can build effective scares. It's
a change from the tripod cam of Paranormal Activity and the car-sickness cam of
The Blair Witch Project, and it nails this middle ground perfectly. I offer it
a most humble 18 standards out of a 700mL bottle of Smirnoff Vodders (cheers
Dan Murphy), and I cannot quantify into a similar measurement just how wet I am
for [●REC]2: The Squeakquel.
Get your head around the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQUkX_XowqI
This is exactly the same as Quarantine...
ReplyDeletethat could be because Quarantine is an American shot-for-shot remake of [REC]...
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