George A Romero may have kickstarted the zombie horror genre and defined many of its parameters, but his recent effort ‘Diary of the Dead’ was a massive backfire, and by all accounts, a box office AND cult flop. However, the trend that gained mass popularity with the Blair Witch Project, and more recently Cloverfield, of using a camera as the audience’s point of view is utilised beautifully in Spanish directors Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero’s “[rec]“.
Centering around a young reporter and her camera operator following some firemen on their night duties, [rec] soon descends into chaos in its beautifully paced 70 ish minutes. After an introduction to the reporter as she does her best to make a piece for her tv show ‘While you’re asleep’ from an otherwise dull night at the local fire station, the crew are called to a local apartment building to assist an elderly lady trapped in her apartment.
Without wishing to ruin anything about the plot, its needless to say there’s more to the situation than meets the eye, and the story that unfolds feels well pieced together and has clearly learnt a lot from influences such as Dawn of the Dead and the Resident Evil and Silent Hill videogame franchises. Also worthy of note is the excellent use of diargetic sound in the film. Set as it is in a large apartment building, the use of echo and ambient sound is fantastic, so make sure you crank up the 5.1 for this one!
I urge you to grit your teeth, grab this on dvd and hit the lights out for an excellent night-in thriller to remember – I’d also recommend double billing this with ‘The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue’ – easily my number 1 zombie film, again by a Spanish director, curious..
Tags: camera, camera pov, point of view, pov, rec, record, reporter, spanish, thriller, zombie
