[REC]2: See It and Scream
Seen [REC]? You don’t need to have seen it to enjoy the recently released-on-DVD [REC]2 (2009), but it wouldn’t hurt. [REC] was a scary little piece of action in which a television crew following the activities of a fire department ends up in the thick of the zombifying infection of an architecturally interesting apartment building in Barcelona (both [REC] and [REC]2 were filmed in Spanish and subtitled). The suspected cause of the horror is an especially fast-acting virus. The action is recorded on the TV crew’s videocam.
[REC]2 picks up 15 minutes after [REC] ends, with a SWAT team and a “medical officer” entering the building in search of the source of the infection. One of the officers is videotaping “everything,” and the men are sealed in the building. Only the voice of the medical officer will get them out, and it must be confirmed by voice recognition software. To say that all hell breaks out would be putting it mildly, especially after the “medical officer” proves to be a priest sent by the Vatican to collect a blood sample in what seems to be an outbreak of demonic possession.
With tight shots and continuous action, [REC]2 takes the viewer on an 84-minute thrill ride with no comfort stops. The suspense is not in wondering how it will end (the DVD box synopsis tells us where the movie is going), but what will happen next. Complications are supplied by a group of teenagers who stumble into the building after trying to make a blow-up doll fly, and a fireman and a building resident who manage to get in through the sewage system—one in search of his buddies, the other looking for his wife and daughter.
[REC]2 is violent and bloody, but the camera does not linger on gore—instead it is focused on the people who have muddled into this terrifying situation. More creepy than scary (like Blair Witch Project), it rushes the audience to a frightening apocalypse and, in the end, gives the devil his due.
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