For most of us,
The Blair Witch Project (1999) was the first
horror story we experienced that tried to disguise itself as
real-life events. (A few novels had actually done this,
hundreds of years earlier.)
It claimed to be an unfinished documentary
shot by three students. The three had disappeared in the
wilderness, never seen again. In other words: We’ll
never know where they went, but this seems to be what
happened. It was an exciting idea, rarely used before.
Lots of imitations followed, not just in the USA, but in
places like Japan and Korea too.
Like some of those movies,
(Rec) presents itself as a live TV program.
A reality series, all its footage shot live on location.
An attractive newscaster, Angela, covering the lives of
people doing exciting jobs after dark. You don’t get to know
Angela well, apart from her on-the-scene life.
But you know she can do her job. You watch her
switch on a glowing smile, like clockwork each time she needs to.
She understands that interruptions and delays are part of
the job—you need to turn the smile back on, the second the camera
rolls again.
She has the perfect face, a million-dollar smile,
large expressive eyes. The camera operator Pablo doesn’t say
much. He needs to stay in the zone; stay close to Angela,
give her the shots she wants. To know what she wants without her
talking.
Their show is called
While You’re Asleep. Tonight they are
covering Barcelona’s fire department. Angela makes a smooth
introduction as she meets the firefighters. She is a people
person, enjoying the back-and-forth.
Just anotherexciting night; Angela introduces the latest
While You’re Asleep episode
Hanging out with firefighters; Angela knows how to have fun
during down time
The filmmakers know we are familiar with
reality-TV. We have seen our share of shows with people
doing dangerous jobs: police, animal cops, corrections officers.
And professionals filming the action or shadowing these
people; we are familiar with them too.
But all this familiarity works in the movie’s favor.
We sit there, not expecting anything worse than usual.
Then we get more than we bargained for.
In (Rec), the heroes (like
Manu, the firefighter you get to know best), are put in a
situation foreign to them…alien. The same with Pablo and
Angela. They are out of their element, cut off from the people and
equipment they need. Instead of the usual help, they get
orders, warnings, threats.
Not to say they haven’t dealt with emergencies
before. Far from it.
But they are quickly realizing this situation is
much worse, many levels up, from anything they have
experienced.
They enter an apartment building and get the basic
story: an old lady in danger. She lives alone, no family,
barely any friends.
They enter the apartment. A long hallway,
making it hard to see her well. She stands at its far end.
Her nightgown is covered with blood; her expression is a
crazed one.
The old lady—more than they bargained for
In one second, everyone’s expectations
transform…totally. She jumps at the closest firefighter and
bites his throat. The others can’t get her off him for a
long while; she draws a lot of blood. They rush the
injured man to the lobby.
A second huge change from everyday reality—the
building is sealed off—you can’t leave. Only a short
announcement: Health authorities made the decision for
everyone’s safety.
Instead of trying to do a lot of things and
none of them well, the people making
(Rec) decided to stick to a few themes, keep it
simple, and do those well.
Okay… so what did they succeed at?
Most obvious, they show you a devastating downhill slide,
from the everyday, generally routine life of newscasters to…the
opposite. A small piece of Hell on Earth, full of human dogs
with rabies. You’re locked in, no help is coming.
Second it shows the reality we usually don’t get to
see— people locked in, for everyone else’s good.
The ones numbered underneath the headlines: 32
Feared Dead.
Not to get melodramatic, but our TV remotes make us
a little like gods on Mt. Olympus. We sit watching from the
outside with that freedom; if the news is too depressing we can
turn it off, or flip the channel to American Idol.
(Rec) shows us the reality we
choose to turn off.
A message on the loudspeakers; someone will
come inside in a few minutes to run blood tests. The man
enters, dressed in a sterile suit. (You never find out if
he’s an MD, nurse, M.A. or a tech.) The medic gives the
lobby more bad news. This unknown disease is spread in
saliva. Authorities believe it started with a dog in a
veterinary hospital. It awoke in a state of rage.
Jennifer is a quiet little girl that Angela was
drawn to, spent a while talking to. She mentioned having a
sick dog. The man tells them the crazed dog had the same
name as Jennifer’s dog, Max.
Since the interview, Jennifer has remained quiet in
her mother’s arms, expressionless. The whole lobby stares at
them.
Without warning, Jennifer whirls around and bites her
mother in the face. She leaps to the ground, stands snarling
a second at the crowd, then like a blur, is up the stairs and
gone. The medic and Manu go upstairs looking for
Jennifer.
The next few scenes are the ones attacked most often
by critics. Lots of sarcastic comments about “incredibly
stupid, typical horror-movie characters” and things like
that. It is hard to disagree.
You might argue that these people are not so much
stupid as they are caught in an adrenaline rush. But the nasty
comments have some truth. The two men wear no protection,
not even gloves. No reason to think Jennifer will let them
do anything to her.
Jennifer— likely infected; not one to be treated without precautions
Another long dark hall. Nobody.
But as Manu steps back into the hall, Jennifer is suddenly
there. A true jump-out-of-your-seat moment, intense as any
you have seen. You get a good look at Jennifer.
Blistery lesions on her face, discolored skin. No one would
bet that you could get near her without getting bitten.
Screeching, she is all over the medic. Manu
has to try to pull her away. She makes noises like a crying
baby, only more shrill.
Downstairs, less survivors than when they
left.
(Rec) has been in two chapters so
far. Chapter One; everyday TV-reality show.
Chapter Two; on-the-spot emergency news coverage.
The third chapter has just started; pure personal survival
in a building full of crazed people. In no time, Pablo and
Angela are the only ones not bitten.
Angela—her world in a rapid slide downwards
What happens afterwards may not be logical, but you
won’t have time to think about it till later. (Rec)(>’s
story has some minor holes in it, but the rest of the movie is
brilliantly shot, directed, and edited. Its style feels
radically different from before.
That makes sense. It is not a familiar
TV show any longer, or even a breaking news story. What you
have are two people on the run, desperate to stay alive.
They find themselves in the building’s only vacant
apartment. One room once used as a medical laboratory.
Old newspaper clippings. A girl in Portugal,
originally thought to be possessed. Gradually—people suspecting
she was ill with an unknown virus. A higher-up giving an
order; terminate this girl now for everyone’s safety.
Nothing original; But imagine it a
moment from Angela’s point of view.
REC has that power to pull you in…
out of your neighborhood-mall multiplex theater into…her world.
The acting is that good. The way it is shot makes you
feel it—a TV newscast gone terribly wrong…straight into Hell.
You are right there with the last two survivors in those
festering rooms.
If you can spare a second, you may remember Angela as
she was, earlier. The contrast is devastating.
is short for a main feature, less than 80 minutes.
But you can only guess how much is packed into these
moments. A roller coaster.
Blair Witch left most of the terror
in its ending to your imagination. (Many walked out of the
theater mystified, either not getting it, or convinced the whole
story was a bad con job. I have to admit; at that point, I
was in the first group. I remember others saying
simply—Don’t waste your time.) But like the old cliché, is
up close and personal. Not much story to remember, but
action that hits you like a freight train.