The Wedding Shamble

Film: [REC]³: Genesis
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Rules, the say goes, are meant to be broken. There is some truth to this idea in the sense that breaking rules is how we get presented with stories that surprise us. The truth is that you need to be able to understand and use the rules to know how to break them correctly. This is true in grammar, in storytelling, and in movie making as well as just about everywhere else. [REC]³: Genesis breaks a huge rule of its genre, does it for no good reason, and ultimately suffers because of it. There’s no getting around the fact that this movie breaks faith with the audience.

To talk about [REC]³, we’re going to need to dive back a little into the previous films. The main thing that needs to be remembered is that we are dealing with something that is a great deal like a zombie virus in the sense that it apparently brings back people from the dead who immediately start trying to bite other people. The other thing we’re going to need to remember from the original films is that the virus in question is essentially a viral version of a demonic possession. This will become extremely important in the plot as we proceed.

Ten Days of Terror!: [REC2]

Film: [•REC]2
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The question of what constitutes a zombie is once again important in the film [•REC]2 (sometimes written as [REC2] or even [•REC]². For ease, I’m going to write it as [REC]2, sort of the best of all worlds and avoiding dealing with that bullet). This is a sequel to [•REC], one of the better found-footage horror movies, and far superior to its American remake, Quarantine. This sequel takes place immediately following the events of the first movie; in fact, the opening moments of this and the closing moments of the first are identical.

But, it helps to be brought up to speed—it has been a few years since I’ve seen [REC]. Basically, a reporter named Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) was shadowing a firefighting team who get called to an apartment complex. It happens to be ground zero for what looks a lot like a zombie apocalypse, but when we get to the end seems to have more biblical apocalypse written all over it. Our patient zero is infected/infested with something, but is being held at bay by a priest with a great deal of religious iconography, lending some support to the idea that this is not just a plague, but a possession that is somehow spreading.

Wednesday Horror: [•REC]

Film: [•REC]
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Found footage is a hard sell for me. While I think it’s possible to tell a good story in the found footage style, I think a lot of times the style gets in the way of the story being told. With [•REC] (or [REC], [Rec] or simply REC) we have film that is doubly controversial. It’s found footage, something that doesn’t always work. It’s also a film that hits that zombie/non-zombie dividing line. Are we looking at a zombie apocalypse or is this a 28 Days Later-style infection?

Regardless, it’s not difficult to see where [•REC] takes its inspiration: zombie movies and zombie-inspired movies like the aforementioned 28 Days Later. It’s also clearly inspired by the sort of television magazine show that feature a reporter and camera operator going on location for local interest stories. That’s the case here, with our television presenter Angela Vidal (real-life television presenter Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) going on location to a local firehouse to see what a typical night is like for the firefighters.