[REC] - A Horror Film Classic In The Making!

No horror film has gotten under audiences’ skin recently more then the Spanish film [REC] which has been taking the film festival circuit apart (pun intended) for over the last year. American studios quickly jumped on the ship with the quickie remake QUARANTINE (itself a pretty damn good film), but [REC] has a raw and unforgiving atmosphere with unknown actors (at least to American shores) that bring the scares home unlike the remake which had a cast of young & up coming actors.

If you’ve seen the American remake QUARANTINE then you already know 95% of the story as the remake played it true to the original. {REC] finds reporter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) at a Barcelona firehouse covering the events that happen at a firehouse during the graveyard shift when all normal people are sleeping. In fact, the show that they are filming is called “While You Sleep.” Thinking that the night will be a bust since typically nothing really happens at a fire station at night, Angela and Pablo soon find themselves tagging along with the firemen during what should be a routine call in which an apartment complex has reported noises coming from one of the tenants’ homes.

When they arrive, police are already on the scene and are about to go in all the while Angela keeps films hoping to get something exciting for her show. Once they step into the apartment they encounter an old woman who appears to be senile and unresponsive but when she attacks one of the police officers the firemen are forced to defend themselves and all hell breaks loose. They try to get the wounded police officer out of the building but soon realize that they and all the other tenants of the building have been locked up in the building by order of the CDC and the police. It appears that they have been exposed to some type of infectious disease that spreads quickly turning people into, for lack of a better word “zombies” whose only goal is to kill. Now Angela and the uninfected tenants must band together in order to find a way out of the building before it is too late.

Filmed entirely from the POV of Pablo’s camera the film is relentless and fast paced from beginning to end and it puts you right into the action and danger of the film. Similar to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and more recently CLOVERFIELD and DIARY OF THE DEAD, [REC] is a testament that good horror films only need to put the audience in the same shoes as the characters in the film to be effective. Having seen QUARANTINE before this film you’d think that I would have already been prepared for what was going to happen, but [REC] is more effective and still more terrifying simply because I was unfamiliar with any of actors in the film. One of the highlights of last year (that now only has to get an official release here in the states).

QUARANTINE: One of the Scariest Films of the Year!

With only four major horror films being released this October (the others being SAW V, THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY, and SPLINTER), QUARANTINE, the America remake of the Spanish film REC, is one of the highlights of the Halloween season and one of the best remakes to come out in quite some time. Although the original REC has yet to be released here in the states (due to the fact that the studios don’t want people’s expectations of QUANTANTINE to be judged by the original film), QUARANTINE comes off as a suspenseful and altogether terrifying experience.

Angela Vidal and her cameraman Scott (Jennifer Carpenter and Steve Harris, respectfully) are doing an expose on firefighters particularly Jake and George (Jay Hernandez & Johnathon Schaech, respectfully), who reveal that most of the calls that they take are mostly as EMTs. As Jack and George reveal their seemingly uneventful lives on the job, a late night call comes in to the firehouse giving Angela and Scott the opportunity to catch the boys in action on the job. They soon arrive at an apartment complex in which several tenants have been hearing a woman screaming in her apartment. With the help of some police officers, Jack and George break in with Angela not far behind. When they try to help the screaming woman she attacks them injuring one of the cops. This attack leads to the revelation that something isn’t quite right and their fears are soon realized when they are unable to leave the building due to the fact that the police have the building quarantined off and they won’t tell the trapped inhabitants why.

One by one each of the inhabitants of the apartment complex become infected with what appears to be some sort of fast acting killer virus and emotions become even more escalated when they can’t leave and the building becomes infested with more of the infected. As time runs out and hope is no-existent, Angela and Scott must find a way to survive until help comes…if it ever does.

Like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, CLOVERFIELD, and DIARY OF THE DEAD, this film is told completely from the perspective of Scott’s camera, which at times is very impressive considering how much the camera is always on the move. These types of films have been on the rise as of late and don’t seem to be waning in the slightest. Written by John and Drew Dowdle (based on the REC screenplay by Jaume Balaguero, Luis Bardejo, and Paco Plaza) and directed by John Erick Dowdle QUARANTINE is one of the best remakes in quite some time and one of the best genre films of the year mainly because it never forgets to create suspense and terror while also telling a compelling story. With so many genre films seemly going for the shock-gore moment it’s great to see a film that actually is suspenseful and terrifying. Definitely, one not to be missed.

Film Review: RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR

Brad and Lexi (Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack, respectfully) are a happy couple who have just moved into their new home when a dirty bomb goes off in the middle of Los Angeles bringing with is a deadly air born toxin of unknown origin and magnitude. This is the premise behind the film RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR, which is a serious look at a real world possibility.

Due to the real world attacks on the World Trade Center and the events in its aftermath, RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR hits home like very few films do. Brad is stuck at home when he learns the news that his wife Lexi was in Los Angeles when the dirty bomb went off. When he tries to enter the city in search of her he is stopped by a military presence claiming that a lethal toxin was released when the bomb went off and that the best thing he could do was to go hold and secure himself in his house. Refusing to leave his wife out in the open he attempts to disobey the military orders but soon has second thoughts when he sees a survivor of the blast who was exposed to the toxins get gunned down in the streets.

Forced back home he attempts to blockade himself within his own home with the help of the neighborhood lawns keeper who is trapped as well unable to get back home to his own family. Once secure, Brad comes to the horrible realization that Lexi survived the initial blast in Los Angeles and made her way home. Unable to let her into the house in fear of exposing them to the deadly toxin, Brad’s commitment to his wife will be stressed to a breaking point as fear of death and contamination looms ever so closer.

The film is a tense and suspenseful film from start to finish as courtesy writer/director Chris Gorak. Both Cockrane and McCormack bring their characters to glorious life as a normal couple faced with an extraordinary situation especially when the terror or the military looms around every corner. The film is never predictable and continues to grab you from start to finish especially in the closing moments of the film when everything is turned on its head.

RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR is one of the best indie films to come along in a long time and it is definitely not one to be missed.