[REC] – DVD Review

The Film

I saw this movie Quarantine a little over a year ago. While some people didn’t like it I found it frightfully entertaining. Quarantine though is another one of Hollywood’s reinventions. Molded from the original Spanish horror film [REC].

[REC]  follows reporter Angela Vidal(Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) as they follow a local fire departments simple everyday routine. As the firehouse alarm goes off the fire fighters and  news crew head off to an apartment building  from where they received a call about a trapped woman in the building.

Arriving to the scene with a few police officers already at the building they break into the woman’s room and she becomes violently out of control and bites one of the officers. The crew head back downstairs to the main entrance hallway where the tenants are watching the police and military seal up the building from the outside. The tenants see the fireman get thrown from the balcony and lands right in the middle of them. Wow, the old lady is strong aint she! AS the small crew head back up stairs they find the zombie-fied old lady just standing at the end of the hall way  huffing and puffing when all of a sudden she takes off towards the crew and the one remaining cop empties some lead into her! This starts to traumatize Angela some.

As Angela tries to pull it together she interviews a young girl named Jennifer  who is suffering from tonsillitis, or so claims her mother. Jennifer tell Angela about her Dog Max who went to the vet because he was also sick.

Now one of the health inspectors arrives and starts treating the injured who all of a sudden become very violent He starts telling them of delays in blood types and about a dog being treat with the same symptoms and became violent and starting attacking other pets. He tells them the dog had to be euthanized and was traced to the apartment building. As Jennifer’s mom defends her daughter from the accusations Jennifer decides to zombie out on her and bite a plug out of her neck. So now we have another one being turned!

As Angela and Pablo fight off and retreat they find  that some of the “dead” bodies are gone now. As they search for some keys that might lead to their freedom they end up in the penthouse. They look around at these pictures on the walls and find out the former resident was an agent of the Vatican who was charged with researching and isolating a virus believed to be a biological cause of  demonic possession. Later to be found in a young girl who the agent kidnapped and brought to the apartment building to be experimented and researched on hopefully to find a cure.

Angela and Pablo investigate the room and the attic door falls open only for Pablo’s curiosity to itch at him. He holds his trusty camera up to the entrance and shines the light around the room and quickly the light gets blown by what we see is a young person hiding in the attic.  Angela starts freaking out more  but Pablo finds his switch for the night-vision on the camera. They find a tape player with the now abandoned Vatican agent’s research on it confessing of his failure to find a cure and of a  sealed door in the penthouse. As Pablo scans the room with the camera’s night-vision he see’s the now open door and finds a creepy looking

Ghoulish figure searching the room. The now grown girl has escaped and is combing the room for anything moving. Pablo grabs Angela and as they try to make an escape Pablo trips and falls and the zombie-like girl attacks him violently feeding on his flesh. Angela grabs the camera and runs for her life only to trip and fall to. She drops the camera and as she leans forward to grab it she is pulled away into the darkness. And scene!

The original and remake are very similar in style, storyline and in the character’s themselves. REC has the original feel to it and being a foreign film puts it with the rest of the emerging foreign masterpieces slowly making their way to the mainstream. The lighting is a little better in REC and we can tell whats going on a little better than Quarantine. The rabies-like virus closely resembles the rage virus in 28 Days/Weeks Later.

REC is directed by Jaume Balaquero and Paco Plaza and written by Jaume Balaquero and Lois Berdejo. Makes you wonder if something like this could happen!

The DVD

Special Features: The Making Of

Language: Spanish and English

The Film: Rating:

The DVD: Rating: