[Rec] 2007 Review

Written by: jackalqueen   

Lets play a game of substitution: Swap New York for Spain, a leaving party for documentary, monster for zombies and 'Oh my God' for 'What's happening?' and what you'd have is Cloverfield, not [Rec].

This is documentary style footage of a news crew following a team of firefighters.  They get called to an apartment building after neighbours reported screaming and thought an old woman had had an accident.  When they try to rescue her, she turns on them and attacks them and starts the spread of infection.  The authorities quarantine the building and it's everyman or woman for themselves.

The start of the film is quite boring and the shaky, fuzzy, weird and sometimes deliberately nonexistant picture quality is downright annoying most of the time.
However, this film had some gore and some actual creepy moments, especially the ending where they find out the cause of the zombie-like infection. 

This film will suffer by comparison to Cloverfield, even though it was released first and most people will never watch it because it's in Spanish with subtitles and it hasn't been hyped to death.

It's not great by any means and it's certainly not the most original idea but it is not the worst film I have seen lately.  If you can make it through the boring start, you will be pleasantly surprised by the end when the director suddenly remembers he was making a horror film.