[REC]

a Fakeumentary Antiexcellence

[REC] poses at least two significant questions towards one prepared to scratch one's face off via soaking into the superblunt shallowness this here Ruthless Blaming of All Horrors delivers. 1. How low exactly a director may assume the audience's awareness levels to be operating on? 2. Will someone give back that 70 minutes for one who wasted those innocent moments on this flick? While the first question needs to be precisely elaborated on, for the second, we shall acknowledge the permanent loss of those 70 minutes. Yet those are 70 minutes you won't ever forget - whether you are willing to forgive for the director, remains a decision to be made by you.

Spanish filmmaker Jaume Balagueró harasses the integrity of the consensus reality grid with a fakeumentary to exhibit essential influences from the zombie genre, also it poses evident interest to claim the meritorious elements of The Blair Witch Project, the horror fakeumentary that is yet to be surpassed. Though many claim [REC] to be a defendable, even an effective (hick!) effort, I am almost entirely sure that they are simply deceived by the handy cam feature of the film, a nature in desperation to unleash a tremendously convincing effect on you, but demonstrates a very shallow tool set, making it quite hard to keenly accept this clumsy invitation to an even more clumsier horrorrun.

We have our cameraman and a reporter chick in front of the recording hardware, a girl whose acting quickly becomes very very hard to appreciate, so desperately she is trying to be the focal point of attention - steadily, convincingly failing masterfully, in my opinion. They are doing a report on the everyday life of the local Firefighter department. We have a brief introduction sequence and enough time to account on the general mood of the building, spiced up by the persistent camera crawing of the reporter girl, then a fire quickly arises in the vicinity, thus the squad and the reporters are on their way to handle and document the situation.

Apparently, the affected building hosts some kind of a viral infection, an old lady upstairs goes like: mad, zombifies hastily, and attacks a fireman. Then the main narrative element of [REC] may finally reveal itself for the very first time, just to stick around for pretty much all the remaining period. This element is: shouting, social mayhem, simulated chaos-mediocrity. EVERY SINGLE person is engaged in intense verbal warfare with some other person, this is the practical substitute Balagueró had to rely on for - presumably - not having anything more to say in the genre than zombies are mean monzthaz and they are out for a major chunk of our phat azzezz.


-How do I know she is NOT one of THEM??
-Dude. You SEE she ISN'T.

As for storytelling considerations, the director utilizes the all-time-classical, still defendable and highly effective method of creating a lockdown situation, where all participants are to confront the zombies they are stuck together with in the building, as the outskirts of the place is even more heavily infected than the interior portions. So, shouting each other's face off is a highly mature method to handle a crysis situation like this, no doubt.

Of course you can't make out a single word of what the shouting is about as there are ten-fifteen of shouting people present, and surely they are doing their silly screamaround at the same time - not that I would assume that their words pose any relevance beyond the fact that they attempt to render chaos and desperation evident. Do not think that this aforementioned element is but a supportive decision in [REC]. No. This is a BIG no, even a no-no. You WILL spend most of the time watching people shouting the hair out of each other's nose, then someone who got bite: turns to a zombie, too! Even worse: they even find the merits to get surprised about this on consecutive occasions, what a laugh.

Further, blatant flaws in storytelling are abruptly delivered in spite of extremely cheap scares, like a sequence where a squad of volunteers decide to check out the upper portions of the building, and they find a little girl. Amazingly, all firefighters seem to have immense memory problems and they approach the little girl as if the site would have nothing to do with a lethal viral infection, and they are most surprised when the little girl bites off the leader's face. I am still mad at myself for failing to get shocked considerably by that particular scene, also I apologize if I spoiled your enjoyment for this amazingly surprise-packed sequence.

[REC] offers almost no peek moments whatsoever, and when it does, their effectiveness is dimmed already by the prior sequences of the ever-present shout-out marathons. I ask you this: how long you think you could maintain interest and a relation to shouting people when they truly do not do a single other thing than - shouting? This sounds superblunt even in written form, and I guarantee you will have an immensely shallow period of time watching it in a "narrative" form.

Fear is constant tension without an evident element to ease it up or to safely rely on, yet the most horrifying aspect of [REC] remains it's eternal cluelessness about how to summon this delicate, unpleasant sensation - the sensation we were wished for here, and got but a profoundly cheap, strengthless mockery of it.


- WHAT?? "Ease up??"
- Naaah! Pizza! PIZZA!

Just for the [REC]ord:
I am speechless.

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