Although it is somewhat smarter and more skillfully made than most of what currently passes for horror cinema in Hollywood, Rec is still just more of the same tired old moves. Its premise is shrewd and its duration admirably brief, but there is nothing here that you haven't seen before.
The opening few minutes feature a young reporter looking at the rather uneventful lives of some fireman living part-time inside an urban Spanish fire station, and between interviews she is quick to express her utter boredom to her cameraman; a perception that the audience is clearly supposed to share. The bitter irony is that these sequences are so well paced, so rigidly researched and authentic, that they are ten times more interesting than everything that happens afterwards, when the camera begins to shake ceaselessly and people begin to scream rather a lot.
The plot has a nice John Carpenter-ish conspiracy bent about it that sadly turns out to go nowhere, and the virus, clearly inspired by the one created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 Days Later, is clumsy. That relentless, animalistic implacability is replaced here by a quaint, vacant semi-consciousness. These infected folk often pause for dramatic effect in darkened hallways, and in one hilarious (unintentional?) instance, turn to pose for the camera just before chomping into someone's neck.
If all this relentless nihilism and verite violence is new to you, you may well find enough here to enjoy. Everyone else is very likely to get bored long before these 85 minutes are up.
The opening few minutes feature a young reporter looking at the rather uneventful lives of some fireman living part-time inside an urban Spanish fire station, and between interviews she is quick to express her utter boredom to her cameraman; a perception that the audience is clearly supposed to share. The bitter irony is that these sequences are so well paced, so rigidly researched and authentic, that they are ten times more interesting than everything that happens afterwards, when the camera begins to shake ceaselessly and people begin to scream rather a lot.
The plot has a nice John Carpenter-ish conspiracy bent about it that sadly turns out to go nowhere, and the virus, clearly inspired by the one created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 Days Later, is clumsy. That relentless, animalistic implacability is replaced here by a quaint, vacant semi-consciousness. These infected folk often pause for dramatic effect in darkened hallways, and in one hilarious (unintentional?) instance, turn to pose for the camera just before chomping into someone's neck.
If all this relentless nihilism and verite violence is new to you, you may well find enough here to enjoy. Everyone else is very likely to get bored long before these 85 minutes are up.