[REC] - VERY scary horror

[silentbobafett]

MINOR SPOILERS

Heard this was well scary but havent seen a film in a long time that really scared me (and I loooove a good horror)

Well I've just finished this and I'm shitting myself! It's wellscary! Check it out. When I first saw how it was done (camcorder) I thought "not again". But stick with it, about half way in it gets well good and the final 10 minutes are so spine chilling that you'll forgive an unoriginality in the early parts. And it's not all that unoriginal, it was a great idea... and you really didn't know where it was going... but fuck me, this ine scene near the end will freak the fucking shit out of you!!!

[Keepcoolbutcare]

thanks for the [Rec], sbf.

gotten some good reviews so far, but no one really major has chimed in yet.

premise seems interesting enough, even though the genre has been mined a lot of late, still room for one more, so long as it's good...

[papalazeru]

I dunno. I'm still uncertain about this.

The advertising was a bit wank and the whole poster in the UK pissed me off.

I might give it a go, so long as AH doesn't support it.

[Pacino86845]

gotten some good reviews so far, but no one really major has chimed in yet.

Well rest assured:

Well just to make you douches somewhat happier, I watched that Spanish found-camera horror movie, [Rec], and it was NOT awesome at all. It's even worse than Cloverfield!!!

The set-up is somewhat more plausible than that of Cloverfield. The idea is stolen from that 9/11 documentary made by the two French brothers that were the only ones to have footage of the first plane hitting the towers.

In [Rec] we follow a reporter, Angela, who works on a nightly television program, and her cameraman Pablo. They are doing a segment on fire fighters, and are distinctly bored from the lack of action going on at night when suddenly the alarm sounds and they get to ride with the fire fighters in the big red truck!

They're called to check on some old lady who apparently hurt herself in her apartment. Before we know it the old lady hadn't really hurt herself and she is teh CRAZY! She bites one of the policemen at the scene, and while everyone is screaming and scrambling to get out of the building, they quickly come to realize that while they were inside investigating, an entire police force has mobilized outside the building. They (Angela, Pablo, a couple of cops, a couple of fire fighters, and about a dozen residents of the apartment building) are all locked in until further notice.

And then trouble ensues!!!

What we've got with [Rec] is the basic Blair Witch formula, which has been somewhat rekindled with Cloverfield. This looks to be the year of the found-camera pseudo-genre, but with wildly shaking cameras (can't a bloody TV cameraman keep it steady, and how shitty is his camera that it constantly goes out of focus like that for extended lengths of time?), I-won't-point-the-camera-at-anything-cool cinematography, and most notably the barely-over-an-hour run length, this new trend may constitute the greatest scam pulled by the film industry in many years.

Without bothering with backstory or any sort of character development, this type of film cuts right to the action and keeps it up more or less consistently until the end. Movies that clock under eighty minutes means that you can cram more screenings in a day, which also means that you stand to make more money. And on top of that, because they're so short they obviously cost little to make, especially in the case of [Rec], which had only a few practical effects, and nothing else. Blair Witch meets 28 Days Later, riding the rising found-camera trend. Save your money, let's end this madness now!!!

Vern was begging people not to bolster Michael Bay's Transformers 'cause he was afraid we were gonna start seeing more turds of its ilk. I am begging you all, though you may have enjoyed Cloverfield, NOT to let the film industry, American or otherwise, continue exploiting this approach to filmmaking. This isn't filmmaking, it really is just hacking about with the shaky out of focus camera work and the screeching into microphones.

[Rec] gets a dismal 4/10 from this grumpy filmgoer.

[AtomicHyperbole]

Who the fuck is this Pacino hack? I bet he writes for AICN or some hack site.

hacklulz

[AtomicHyperbole]

I dunno. I'm still uncertain about this.

The advertising was a bit wank and the whole poster in the UK pissed me off.

I might give it a go, so long as AH doesn't support it.

I support everything you're looking forward to, only with 100% more ramming it down your throat!

[Pacino86845]

Heheh, that "review" is definitely teh H4xx0rZ, but I just had to chip in with my cranky comments!

[papalazeru]

Who the fuck is this Pacino hack? I bet he writes for AICN or some hack site.

hacklulz

It's a good thing I made my decision early on this AH fellow. Smite him down I say.

I smite you with my gauntlet and challenge you to anuses at dawn, dear fellow.

May the best rectum win!

[doglips]

W ho the fuck is this Pacino hack? I bet he writes for AICN or some hack site.

hacklulz

It's a good thing I made my decision early on this AH fellow. Smite him down I say.

I smite you with my gauntlet and challenge you to anuses at dawn, dear fellow.

May the best rectum win!

You're going to kiss!?!

[papalazeru]

Not without Rohypnol...for me.

[havocSchultz]

2 DEATH PEOPLE!!!

How can it not be good...?

ETA: This is already getting/already has been remade...

Quarantine!!!

[AtomicHyperbole]

I'd probably spend the first part spaffing over the hot latina blonde girl.

Hot latinas and spanish for the ultimate sexy win!

edit - by the way, is it really fair to compare this to Cloverfield seeing as it was in production at practically the same time? The makers couldn't have known. It's not as if Cloverfield is the first evah handheld shockathon.

[Pacino86845]

I made the comparison 'cause both films belong to the same new trend and also 'cause I saw them within just a couple of weeks of each other... also 'cause I first wrote that review in the Cloverfield thread.

In term of the film's content, more apt comparisons can be made to 28 Days Later, Blair Witch Project, and that 9/11 documentary made by those two French brothers that were filming NY fire fighters.

[AtomicHyperbole]

Aha! OK.

But no comment on sexy latinas. Therefore fail.

[Shan]

I found REC entertaining but the ending was weird (and not good weird at that - I found it an incongruous change of direction).

[silentbobafett]

While I agree (and wrote in my opening piece) that shakey came stuff is being done a lot - I don't think that automatically makes it a fail.

We all know about Blair Witch and Cannibal Holocaust before that etc etc

How many films are not shakey cam? Does that mean we all have to go: "Oh no, it's a nother film using tripods, film cameras and a narrative not involving found footage?"

no.

It's always gonna be a good idea IF DONE RIGHT!

Blair Witch, for me, is one of the scariest films I've ever seen. So I guess any film that resembles that is going to fall into two areas for me:

1) Shit rip off

2) Scary fucking shit - maybe cos it reminds me of it, or maybe it's just good on its own right...

Shan mentioned the end - but for me thats when it all went mental! It didn't change direction to much in my mind. We knew something in the building was going to have started it all... and it explained it but with out hammering it out.

And, I'm sorry, but that end was GOOD, in a weird way, a scary way... in everyway!

I was fuckign shit scared. I started this thread right after seeing the film.

That night I had some fucked up nightmares man... I'm sorry but, and I guess this goes for horror films (and films in general I suppose) it's one of those ones that either floats yer boat or it don't.

Well, man, give it a go cos it scared the shit out of me!

[silentbobafett]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/36385

[AtomicHyperbole]

I want to apologise to Pacino.

If anything, the Cloverfield comparasion is apt, because it retains a very similar style of filmmaking if anything. The handheld isn't done in a realistic manner, as is the sound - unless cameras really do get that shell-shock sound effect in real life.

Unlike Pacino, I found it quite effective. Yes, I agree there's the risk that this'll only inspire lazy filmmakers (although to be fair, you'd had thought Blair Witch or that one about the Jersey Devil would've done it by now) but thankfully [rec] managed to claw its own hole to fester in.

Certainly the theater I was in, although small, had all the patrons and my female companion screaming all the way through. I've not actually been to a film where people react like they do in those nightvision trailers, it simply doesn't seem to happen in the UK. But [rec] really managed to get to them.

Myself, however, I'm a bit jaded. Mainly because I pissed a my pants I got scared a so much when I saw One Missed Call last week. I found the atmosphere of [rec] to be very claustrophobic and effective, but the scares... not so much. For me the idea that they were being effectively sealed off to die was very well put across, but mainly it played the horror as a series of boo-shocks and tricks.

However the tempo of these scares is very well measured, allowing the audience to recover before building up again - a sign of a good horror. The handheld effect can be annoying but generally you DO get to see the good bits (aside from one malleting) and one neat little trick managed to make the audience jump twice.

If anything my main criticism is that sometimes the movie had to fill time, and cut to character scenes which either didn't work too well or repeated information we already knew to little effect.

So, [rec] - if you're a hardcore horror afficionado, there's a lot going for it. It even manages to end on a reasonably high note. The Blair Witch inspiration is all-too apparent, but it'll take some doing from Diary of The Dead to knock the it off the handheld-zombie-movie mantle.

Certainly it's got nothing to worry about from The Zombie Diaries... even thinking of that film makes me want to hunt the directors down and bite them.

Mmm. Tasty.

[AtomicHyperbole]

Oh and it DOESN'T NEED A REMAKE.

Fuxxakes. It's hardly the most original film in the first place.

edit - Holy fuck it looks gash. And I love Jennifer Carpenter, but no. Simply no. The only real reason [rec] makes any sense is that it has a sense of realism to a degree...

Anyhow - Click on this if you've seen the film. I'm just suprised that it wasn't a CGI effect!

ACTUALLY... thinking on it... major spoilers in the text below btw...

Right, what's peoples takes on what's happening in [rec]? Is it possession? I initially brushed that off but after reading some imdb stuff... yeah yeah, I know, it's all open ended to give an illusion of depth but still... given that there's all those mysterious noises and the fact that the infected/possessed have that unearthly howl, it makes sense to me. That the possession is passed from one to another.

Certainly the girl is really fucked up. Still human but something else at the same time. I dunno, it's er... nicer to think that it's a demonic possession story and all those weird unexplained noises and the creatures coming back to life, makes sense. Maybe even - just making shit up now - the power of the possession gets stronger the more are possessed. That little girl basically seems like she was waiting for the right moment and Manu and the scientist turn really fucking quickly.

OK, it's just more EFFECTIVE. But the detail in the attic makes me think that the film makers spent some time with a backstory.

[silentbobafett]

Atomic - I agree with your SPOILER theory...

[John-Locke]

I disagree with that theory, from the tapes you hear in the penthouse it's clear that it's just some enzyme that mutated.

Nice, scary and quite memorable little horror film though.

[Shan]

Odd.

The remake trailer has scenes that look almost identical to the original but why oh why in the trailer do they show ...

Spoiler?
.
.
.
.

What was the (reshot almost identical equivalent) *very* last scene from the original in the trailer?

.
.
.
.

I guess it's always possible that they go further in the US remake than where the Spanish version ended but still ...

and at least in the US version we see how they got the tape (which of course is not essential though).

[AtomicHyperbole]

I disagree with that theory, from the tapes you hear in the penthouse it's clear that it's just some enzyme that mutated.

Nice, scary and quite memorable little horror film though.

I dunno, it's a week and a bit ago since I saw it, but I figured that was a spoken theory too, that possession was more complex than just a disease and had other roots to it as well. Clearly I'm not the only person to get that from what I remember reading...

[slumber party69]

While covering the night shift at a small-town fire department, an ambitious young television reporter (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman follow the crew on a call to rescue an elderly woman(Matt Frew) trapped in her apartment. Upon their arrival at the scene, the calm midnight air is pierced by the sound of horrific screams, and the television report takes an unexpectedly dark turn


TEASER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeaUokzE9fI

TRAILER


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib5ZSj6ST0U













I loved it.Its hand held cam 1st person much like blair witch.Don`t want to go into spoilers but the final 20 minutes is intense ,once they enter the attic and the night vision comes on it gets really intense.

9/10




And of course its been made into a remake.

trailer


(spoilers:gives away the ending to [REC] ,WTF is up with that!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNnZTMpZvNE


Also they`re making a [rec 2] this year.

[slumber party69]

oops my bad sorry

[Ribbons]

I saw a viral video for this on YouTube the other day sort of by accident. The video was in English, so I'm not sure whether it was promoting this movie specifically or the impending remake.

[AtomicHyperbole]

Remake prolly. Looks ball-achingly awful.

[yorrick brown]

[aura]

I found the movie very enjoyable for what it is.

It was possibly one of the best "new" horror films I've seen in awhile.

My main gripes about it are purely technical:

1) I had to hunt it down because, apparently, the studios didn't want to release the original feature or the DVD in the states before "Quarantine" came out so that they could make maximum profits on the remake. I think that's pretty shitty on a lot of levels, but mainly because it doesn't bode well for the remake. We all know how remakes usually turn out. To completely disconnect American audiences from the original kinda says, "We know this is going to suck. We just don't want you to know how much until you've spent your money at the theater."

2) The remake's title. "Quarantine" pretty much gives the away the movie's secret. A lot of the movie's effectiveness is due to the fact that the people who are in the building don't understand what's going on...and neither does the audience. They're letting the cat out of the bag as soon as the people read the marquee. That title takes away a lot of the suspense that made the original good.

[DerLanghaarige]

I finally found the time to watch [rec].
At first let me say that it is a very good movie and I rate it 7,5/10. I wanted to say this first, because while I think it was effective and highly recommandable to everybody who loves a good horrormovie, I just can't get over the thought that the "documentary"-gimmick was absolutely unnecessary and also ruins the movie a little bit for me.
I understand that they did it in "Blair Witch", because selling the world that everything in it was real, was the whole concept of the movie. (Remember that they spread the rumor of the found footage long before the movie was shown on festivals.) I also understand that they did it in "Cloverfield", because a giant monster attack on New York just MUST be filmed in the largest possible scale, so the idea of doing the opposite and show just a "homevideo" of this event was great. But I think that everything that happened in [rec] could have also worked when they filmed it as a normal movie. Scenes like whenthe firefighter suddenly smashes on the floor or the whole scene when they try to reach the attic but behind every corner pops a new infected person up didn't need more P.O.V. than a usual horrormovie. All it needs is an inspired director. Let's take the death of Tom Skerritt as an example. He turns around and suddenly the alien is right behind him. That's one of the biggest jump scares in movie history and it's without "documentary cam". Most of the jump scares in [rec] happen in the background and come unannounced, so they were on the right way, but the whole mockumentary thing took me totally out of the movie. (Ironically did Cloverfield the opposite. Because all these quick cuts, blurry pictures and surreal images of the giant creature between the houses were closer to a real nightmare than every dreamsequence that has ever been put on film.) It also didn't help that 85% of the movie's dialogue was: "AAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAH! AAAH!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" The victims screamed, the infected screamed, everybody was screaming!! And to bring up Cloverfield again: It's weird how many people seem to hate that movie just because of the characters, while [rec]'s characters were even more stereotypical. We had the stereotypicl reporter, the stereotypical asshole policeman, the stereotypical old couple, the stereotypical mother with her stereotypical daughter... And I remember that many people hated the fact that Cloverfield's Hud was always filming, but I seriously wondered why Pablo was not just filming when he was running for his life, I also wonder why he took the heavy TV camera with him! Yes, the last few sentences weren't really critizising the movie, but more many of the reviewers. And also yes, while I don't think that [rec] was a bad movie, Cloverfield worked better for me. Just because it knew better how to use it's main attraction.
BTW: In research for my Werewolf book I stumbled yesterday about a movie named "Romasanta", which stars Julian Sands and the girl from "Pan's Labyrinth" and was directed by Paco Plaza, who was also responsible for [rec]. I hope that this one is good too.

[Bloo]

I went to a Halloween short film festival, almost all the entries were by 16, 17, 18 year old kids, which I think is great...what wasn't great was that almost all of them followed the same shakey cam/docu/POV style

and I'm sitting there going "drop the f'n camera and run you moron"

Cloverfield at least gave us a reason why Hud was filming everything and if I remember correctly they told him to drop the camera

i also liked the use of using the camera's light in Cloverfield in the subway scene

[TonyWilson]

I finally found the time to watch [rec].
At first let me say that it is a very good movie and I rate it 7,5/10. I wanted to say this first, because while I think it was effective and highly recommandable to everybody who loves a good horrormovie, I just can't get over the thought that the "documentary"-gimmick was absolutely unnecessary and also ruins the movie a little bit for me.
I understand that they did it in "Blair Witch", because selling the world that everything in it was real, was the whole concept of the movie. (Remember that they spread the rumor of the found footage long before the movie was shown on festivals.) I also understand that they did it in "Cloverfield", because a giant monster attack on New York just MUST be filmed in the largest possible scale, so the idea of doing the opposite and show just a "homevideo" of this event was great. But I think that everything that happened in [rec] could have also worked when they filmed it as a normal movie. Scenes like whenthe firefighter suddenly smashes on the floor or the whole scene when they try to reach the attic but behind every corner pops a new infected person up didn't need more P.O.V. than a usual horrormovie. All it needs is an inspired director. Let's take the death of Tom Skerritt as an example. He turns around and suddenly the alien is right behind him. That's one of the biggest jump scares in movie history and it's without "documentary cam". Most of the jump scares in [rec] happen in the background and come unannounced, so they were on the right way, but the whole mockumentary thing took me totally out of the movie. (Ironically did Cloverfield the opposite. Because all these quick cuts, blurry pictures and surreal images of the giant creature between the houses were closer to a real nightmare than every dreamsequence that has ever been put on film.) It also didn't help that 85% of the movie's dialogue was: "AAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! AAAAH! AAAH!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" The victims screamed, the infected screamed, everybody was screaming!! And to bring up Cloverfield again: It's weird how many people seem to hate that movie just because of the characters, while [rec]'s characters were even more stereotypical. We had the stereotypicl reporter, the stereotypical asshole policeman, the stereotypical old couple, the stereotypical mother with her stereotypical daughter... And I remember that many people hated the fact that Cloverfield's Hud was always filming, but I seriously wondered why Pablo was not just filming when he was running for his life, I also wonder why he took the heavy TV camera with him! Yes, the last few sentences weren't really critizising the movie, but more many of the reviewers. And also yes, while I don't think that [rec] was a bad movie, Cloverfield worked better for me. Just because it knew better how to use it's main attraction.
BTW: In research for my Werewolf book I stumbled yesterday about a movie named "Romasanta", which stars Julian Sands and the girl from "Pan's Labyrinth" and was directed by Paco Plaza, who was also responsible for [rec]. I hope that this one is good too.

I thought the news-cam conceit worked really well for [rec] because of the way it led you deeper and deeper in to what turns out to be a truly nightmarish story. The first scenes where Angela flirts with the camera and the firemen and the routine nature of the beginning of the call out are the first steps on the road to hell. Yeah it could have worked with a straight set-up but the ordinariness of the start is amplified by having it be very flat, normal newsfootage.

[birthmark]

Just watched [REC] last night. Holy shit. Best horror film of all time.