Fantasia - [Rec]

[Rec]

There's something very arrogant about a film trailer that says nothing about the film and simply has night vision camera pointed at a theatre of people watching the film biting their nails, screaming and covering their eyes. But then again, [Rec] has every reason to be as arrogant as it damn well pleases, and even has the badges and nods of approval to back it up from film fests all over the world. I'll accept my folly for passing this film as another over-hyped point-of-view horror and missing the first showing. However, as I helped usher people out of the festival I noticed grown men twice my size (in all honesty that isn't that tough) clutching their chest as they walked out of the theatre I knew I had missed something good.

And wow. Just, wow. If you click on the link above you'll read the most over-hyped summary on the Fantasia website, but again, with street and festival cred coming out the wazoo, hyping this movie doesn't do it justice. You'd have to drag people by the throat and sit them down in the theatre and pry their eyes open to do this movie justice.

Enough gushing. In essence [Rec] treds on the most familiar of familiar territories. Taking a camera point-of-view perspective we join Angela, a local reporter who is following some firefighters for a TV segment. They are called in for a routine call at an apartment for an old woman who has been screaming. As the firemen barge in she attacks a fireman and bites his throat out and is shot to death. The building is soon quarantined and the TV crew, firemen, and apartment tenants are all stuck inside the building as zombie-like trouble bubbles and brews.

The pacing for the film is very well done. Unlike other zombie movies which jump into the action as quickly as possible, the beginning half of the movie is tense but very slow moving. The zombies don't just jump at you, they lay dormant, giving the TV crew enough time to interview and talk to all the characters in the film as it slowly builds up its tension. We all know its a zombie movie coming into the film, but are forced to sit back and wait for the splatter fest. Indeed its only in the last 20 minutes of the movie do we really get to the meat and potatoes of the gore, but that's all secondary anyways. The white-knuckled build up is what makes this movie great, and when the time finally comes for all hell to break loose, boy do we get a shit storm.

Unlike the 'Blair Witch Project' though (and perhaps more like 'Cloverfield') we are show in full glory what we came to see, a zombie flick with crazy zombies. And it scares the living bejezzus out of you. The movie is in such demand in fact, that an American remake has already been finished and is set to come out in October 2008, well before the original evens a chance to establish a firm footing internationally (the original only came out in late November 2007 in Spain, and April 2008 in the UK. In fact it hasn't even officially come out in North America yet!). On a more local scale, the overwhelming popularity of [Rec] at the festival has warranted a third encore screening. Will it get the critic or people's choice award for Fantasia? Lets just say I'm voting for it. Probably multiple times. Not that it needs any more pats on the back.

The only qualm I could make for the film is if put under the microscope the story doesn't hold. Who the hell keeps filming in the middle of a zombie attack? Local TV stations in Spain my prepare their camera people and reporters for all possibilities. Moreover, the storyline has a very sloppy and ambiguous explanation for the zombie infection. While the majority of the film it is treated like a disease spread by saliva, we are given conflicting interpretations later on when its seen as a demonic force stemming somewhere from the Vatican. Which one is it? Is this a strange mix of zombie film lore?

In all honesty who cares? These quibbles are minor at best. You see this movie to get scared and it does the job well. What more could you want?