Story

REC follows a young female reporter and her cameraman doing a news story for a fictional tv show called “While you were asleep”.  Tonight they are heading to a firehouse to do a story on firefighters and to see what a typical night for them entails.  During a routine night at the fire hall, an alarm sounds and a call comes in about a women trapped in her apartment.  They respond to the call and our reporter and cameraman tag along hoping for a juicy story.  Once the crew arrive at the apartment, they notice all of the residents crowded around the lobby, having just heard horrific screams coming from one of the suites.  Tonight is not going to be a normal night for our crew, they are in for a night of relentless, pulse pounding terror!

The story of REC is nothing original, and it’s almost a been there, seen that type of film.  However the presentation is what sets it apart from other similar movies.  Filmed entirely from the cameraman’s perspective through his lens, a sense of realism and urgency remains consistent throughout and helps make what would be plain and boring scenes into scenes that do indeed bring a taste of terror to the audience.

While this filming style does boost the aforementioned qualities, I did find it really annoying at times.  The jerky, fast paced filming made me feel like I was missing out on a lot of the action and certainly missing out on all of the possible gore and special effects.

Characters

The film’s lead; the female reporter Angela I didn’t care for much. She just seemed to be putting it on, in typical celebrity fashion. Look and sound good when the camera is rolling, and turn into a whining degenerate when it’s off. She was constantly ordering around her camera man like a whipping boy, and was quick to fly off the handle and start shrieking and screaming at anyone who disagreed with her. Suffice to say, I didn’t feel any ounce of sympathy towards the proposed heroine, and therefore wasn’t shocked or saddened by any of the shit she found herself in throughout! In that respect I felt REC missed the mark.

Having a strong lead that the audience can sympathize with always works to a film’s benefit. In most horror films of good vs evil, we want to root for the characters if they are likable. In this case I didn’t care if Angela was wiped out like a skid mark in a dirty pair of underwear! The rest of the characters are mainly just filler, none of them develop into anything resembling a complete character, she’s pretty much it. Even her faceless cameraman is only a voice, so it’s hard to feel any connection to him.

Gore/Special Effects

Due to the extremely hectic nature of the film and it’s handy cam shooting style, we aren’t presented with much in the way of gore or special effects. There is a bit of blood and a bit of makeup and effects work on display, but nothing the viewer really gets a good look at. I was extremely disappointed by the amount of camera cut aways during any violent scenes. C’mon, show that shit!

Originality

This film does deserve props for delivering a unique viewing experience, although the story, as I mentioned previously, isn’t a work of original genius. Taking a common theme, and adding in a few sprinkles of uniqueness and some inventive camerawork and you’ve got a reasonably original tale, but nothing groundbreaking to say the least.

Lasting Appeal

This one isn’t going to be in regular rotation in my DVD player. It wasn’t a bad flick, I did enjoy it for the most part, I just didn’t love it. It didn’t bring enough flavor or kick me in the nuts hard enough to make me cream my jeans.

Final Head Count

Alright, so to summarize: We get an alright story with unique presentation. A female lead I couldn’t have given two shits about, some quality jumps and scares, and not a lot of eye candy in terms of effects. Overall a film that was decent, but not amazing.

I think REC deserves:

What did you guys think of it? Let us know in the comments below!