October 3rd: [Rec] (2007)
Nation of origin: Spain
Ratings:
Justin: 5 out of 5
Kim: 5 out of 5
Notes:
So early in the game to say this, but this may be the best film we will watch all October. Why is it that Spain and France get that you can terrify the pants off of people with a shoestring budget and some talent far more effectively than if you cram a bunch of actors and CGI into an overblown “popcorn movie” with a big budget. I didn’t see Quarantine (the American version of this film) and now that I have seen this movie, I probably won’t. [Rec] is shot using one camera, and the cameraman is a character in the film, so it doesn’t get any more immersive than that. This film is like being stuck inside of the most exclusive and awesome haunted house ever. I don’t bother to research the production of these films but I am going to guess that after someone came up with the idea of putting the cameraman in the action (thereby obscuring the “its only a movie” element) they came up with the idea of throwing a bunch of zombies and falling bodies at him with the hopes that, if they could convincingly scare the guy holding the camera, they could scare the audience.
They succeeded. All of the lights are on in my apartment right now.
The voyeuristic aspect of the camera work is fucking eerie, too. You know that scene in the original Halloween where you see an out of focus Michael Myers pop up in the background and in the foreground Jamie Lee Curtis has no idea that he’s still alive, and she looks so relieved and no one knows but the audience that shit is about to get ugly? Yeah, well this whole movie is like that.
While Blair Witch might get credit for pioneering the removal of the 4th wall in horror films, I don’t think think they came close to this. The wonky camera work in Blair Witch was kind of nauseating, where the premise in[Rec] is that, the cameraman is on an assignment for a local news show. So Pedro its totally plausible that he knows what he’s doing behind the camera well enough so that you don’t feel seasick during the whole film. What Blair Witch and this film prove, though, is that fear isn’t about prosthetic makeup, CGI effects, unstoppable killing machines or wanton gore and blood; its about what you can’t see. It will always be more frightening to hear banging noises and someone screaming in the next room and not know what’s happening than it will be to see the monster attacking your neighbor. Take notes, Hollywood. When you remake these films you miss the point completely.
