For grueling horror, the last 45 minutes of this bad boy make for the best horror film in recent years.

A Spanish TV personality and her cameraman are doing a fluff piece at a local firehouse when a call comes in: woman screaming and banging about in her apartment. Ángela and Pablo tag along to record as the firemen rendezvous with the cops.

Things go to hell in a handbasket as it turns out that the woman is infected with the walking death. Well, running death. Next thing you know, the authorities have sealed off the complex and the folks stuck inside are getting picked off one-by-one...

... and then coming back. And they're none too happy about it.

Sort of an inversion of the whole bunker horror subgenre... instead of defending a stronghold, they have to try to escape.

Yeah, it's Blair Witch meets COPS, and the explanation for the phenomenon is kinda loopy, but the directors have a neat flair for taking old tropes and making them seem fresh... and white-knuckle scary. This puppy had me going "Waa!" more than a few times.

Actually, the last half hour had me crawling up my own leg. And the final ghoul is a serious contender for most messed-up ghoul of all. Of any film.

I watched this the day after the similarly-themed Diary of the Dead, and the contrast couldn't be starker: Diary -- while entertaining in its own right -- still seems like a Romero pastiche, but this one takes the mythos and truly delivers the goods.

Even though the dead run.

Too bad this isn't gonna get a Stateside release... before it even got released in Spain it was picked up by an American company to run it through the vanilla machine. Too bad... Manuela Velasco as Ángela is in my opinion the cutest damned horror film heroine I've seen in years.

I'm sure they'll get some Buffy knockoff to fill her shoes.

I thought it was great, too. The last half an hour was seriously nail biting stuff. Not much more to add apart from I loved the way they used those timer switches on the lights in the stairwell so that they kept on going out at the most inopportune moments!

I've wanted to see this since I read about it last year. If it's not getting a US release (is this confirmed or rumor at this point?) what's the best option to see this? Is there a Spanish or UK DVD release yet?

SPOILERS AHOY!


I loved this, too! What a fantastic little movie this was. It was creepy, scary and totally engaging. The final sequence was just unreal... Jaume sure has a way with creepy looking people, huh? The "spirit" in his own FRAGILE creeped me out, too, but that... uh... thing in the attic was even creepier.

Movies don't usually make me jump much these days but when that person fell from the stairwell and hit the ground early in the film, I jumped about a mile.

END SPOILERS...


My old college roommate just finished working on the upcoming "Screen Gems" remake of this (called QUARANTINE) and said that, even though he hadn't seen the original REC yet, that Jaume was on set and the vibe was cool. While it would be nice if they would release the original REC, I get the feeling that the remake might actually be pretty good from what I've been hearing.


As far as getting a "Buffy" type to fill the original actresses shoes... well, they didn't. They got Jennifer Carpenter from DEXTER. She's still cute and sounds like a good choice for casting as the reporter.

Craig, trying to picture you crawling up your own leg is giving ME the willies!

Sounds like a gotta-see.

Sorta weird... my body is a lot more limber during horror films than it used to.

Too bad it doesn't work that way (anymore) when I'm not.

I add my two cents: THIS IS A MUST SEE FILM!

I saw this last year at the Stockholm Film Festival, preceded by a warning from the usherette/introducer: "it was very scary". "Yeah, right - you big girl's blouse" thought I...

Throughout the film, the whole audience (including me) were going up and down like the proverbial bride's nightie. The scares come thick and fast.

[MILD SPOILER]

What is it with that fat old women? What the hell is it in the penthouse suite???

Great Stuff! Scandalous that it isn't out on DVD/Cinema. The remake is guarenteed to be pants, though...

OMG! So I watched this tonight and it scared the living hell out of me and (in tough guy voice) I don't scare easily.

Seriously, one of the most terrifying things ever for me was when I saw DAWN OF THE DEAD as a kid and the zombie slowly started crawling toward the S.W.A.T. guy in the beginning. It gave me such a pit in my stomach. Well, that feeling came back tonight!

SPOILERS

the last 20 minutes of [REC] are so damn terrifying. It is like a great haunted house ride that just keeps hitting you with the scares over and over. And the girl at the end - my nightmares are set for the next 20 years! I did love that Balaguero just couldn't drop his "adults are evil and torture children" motif too.

END SPOILERS

I agree with Craig's assessment of this vs. DIARY OF THE DEAD. While I did enjoy DIARY, it was a scare you pants off film like [REC] that I first imagined when I heard about the project.

Either I'm seriously jaded, or this is one seriously overrated film. Not that I think it's bad, it's just not nearly as good as the praise in this thread makes it out to be IMO. It reminds me of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT not only in execution (i.e., the faux-documentary style), but also in the gushingly over-the-top praise it has gotten for being so "terrifying" and intense here. I honestly feel left out- I wish REC was as terrifying and intense for me as it was for the other folks in this thread, but this was not the case. Not at all.

Vincent

Ah, one thing I forgot to comment on last night. Finally we have a handheld POV film where someone yells, "Put down that damn camera and help me!" and the person actually does.

I tracked down and copy and watched it today. Man oh man, what a ride! Between THE DESCENT and this maybe well made horror films are making a comeback. I thought that it might be a little lacking since the run time is barely and hour and fifteen minutes, but I was wrong.

I fully agree with everyone's thoughts on the last part of the film; one of the most intense endings I've sat through in a while. It got me to jump a few times which is something I usually don't do. And whoever the lead actress was, she is hot, hot hot!

Doesn't surprise me that a remake is in the works, here's hoping they don't totally screw it up. I hope whenever it comes out we get a decent R1 release of the original.

OK, well... urmm....

The remake (called QUARANTINE) is coming in October and a promo/trailer has recently appeared online:

Now before you click on the link below, be advised that the stupid idiots who put this promo together not only explain WAY too much about the film (if this is indeed a teaser trailer, they completely give away some of the mystery as to why the original REC was so creepy), but also give away one of the biggest shocks in the ENTIRE movie at the end... duh... Studio trailer cutters can be morons... I love how the trailer narrator says "There were no explanations..."... oh really? You JUST GAVE AWAY what the movie was about you dipsh@t!.

This all being said it pretty much looks like a close remake in style and substance.

QUARANTINE Trailer

European horror films are coming back at least. The recently released French thriller THEM (ILS) is simple, but effective. A French couple living in a Romanian mansion are suddenly under siege one night from someone, or someones or something. It's been a huge hit at my stores.


marc

SPOILER

Well, hell... they give away the friggin' ending! WTF? Sort of like using the last moment of the original Friday the 13th or Carrie in the trailer. Actually not, because the end of [REC] isn't all that shocking, but still. Knobs.

END SPOILER

That said, the trailer makes it look like they degraded it a little visually to go for the vérité. Muted resolution, more night-vision greens and heavier on the shaky-cam. If the rest of the flick is played like the trailer, it'll be one of those Tinseltown imponderables... in that they took a film that was made on a fraction of their budget and actually remade it look much cheaper.

Hollywood... where does all that money go when it doesn't hit the screen?

And as I expected, it looks like they went for a harsher approach to the protag... you can tell that she's gonna be your typical stock news virago.

What really worked for me in the original was Manuela Velasco's approach to the character. Even though there was a subtext of cold ambition to her, Ángela was still so damned adorable that I really, really wanted her to get out of the brownstone with the footage.

While she looked good in the t-shirt, the character really was the stereotypical horror female that just screams and gets hysterical when everything gets out of control. She was a bit manipulative beforehand, but when things started to hit the fan, she was pretty useless.

Frankly, if this was one of those horror films where the characters are dispatched in order of how annoying they are, she would have been one of the first to get it, I thought.

Still enjoyed [REC] overall, though.

Saw the trailer for REC before a screening of Cloverfield at the Sunshine Cinema in Tokyo the other night, but I think I will be missing the release date! Hope to now catch a DVD in the UK?

The official Spanish DVD of [REC] is hitting stores May 28th. It will have English subs too!

http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/rec-dvd-re...h-english-subs/