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 another exciting 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. But that’s all we’re telling you.
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 were 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.
(REC)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, this movie is up close and personal. Not much story to remember, but action that hits you like a freight train.