REC (2007)

A news reported is doing a documentary on a day in the lives of firemen. The department receives a 911 call from an apartment building about an old lady in some sort of distress, once they arrive is when hell breaks lose. The women attacks a police officer and when they return to the hall they discover that the military has sealed off the building, with no explanation, trapping them inside.

REC is a pretty typical zombie movie made a little more unique with the POV style filming as seen in Cloverfield, Blair Witch, etc. Standard jump out tactics are used as well as fairly dumb characters. One interesting thing to note though is that none of the actors were aware of what was going to happen so the reactions we see are the real ones. Near the top when something falls (not going to go into detail) no one knew that one coming so we see there true fright. This was an interesting idea and paid off well as we get to see something we don't normally get in horror movies, genuine fear.

However this definetly isn't enough to save the movie from itself. It starts off extremely boring and trudges along at a snails pace. It does this to build the massacre and the creepy feeling till the end but it doesn't do it well. None of it is foreboding or even remotely creepy, it's just boring. I don't care that the firemen are eating, watching movies, etc. waiting for a call. The real movie doesn't actually start till about half way through the movie (which is 70 minutes in total). By then it's like who cares? I know I didn't.

Now people are calling this the scariest movie of all time. Why? No idea. There's a few scenes where something jumps out but that's it. The POV angle does nothing to increase the tension level. Most of the shots of the zombies are them being passive, or breaking out of a room but none of them are remotely scary.

There's a couple inconsistencies that remind you that this is only a movie. A special forces biosafety member enters wearing the full biosuit, makes sense. However after he checks on the two "dead" and handcuffs them to the bed he returns to the main hall and removes his helmet. He says the virus is spread through saliva, so this makes sense right? Why have it one? Exactly. He clearly knew how it was spread before entering the building so the suit in the first place is useless, it's only there to scare the people trapped in the building basically.

The plot is thin and cheesy as well. Exorcism, a virus that turns people into zombies passed through saliva (bites), etc. I'm fairly certain there wasn't one innovative idea in the entire film, it just took bits and pieces from other ones and pieced them together.

Overall it's a pretty poor movie. It moves way to slow, the acting is average, the plot is lame, and it's just not a very good movie. An American remake is coming out soon titled Quarantine and following the trend of shitty remakes I'm sure it's going to be even worse.

4/10

-Kartoon