Keepcoolbutcare wrote:gotten some good reviews so far, but no one really major has chimed in yet.
In the Cloverfield thread, I wrote: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.
papalazeru wrote: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.
AtomicHyperbole wrote:Who the fuck is this Pacino hack? I bet he writes for AICN or some hack site.
hacklulz
papalazeru wrote:AtomicHyperbole wrote: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!
John-Locke wrote: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.
DerLanghaarige wrote: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.
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