In 2007, zombie movies were at a crossroads.
Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead perfectly showcased the roads in question. Snyder’s movie, while slightly entertaining, was a studio exercise that had none of the wit, satire. or anything new to say. Shaun of the Dead is a lot more successful as a zombie movie as it is a brilliantly comedic tribute to George A Romero that is both scarier and way more of a blast than Snyder’s Dawn. But, despite their varying quality both movies represent the stylistic plateau of the genre rather than the rebirth. 28 Days Later represented a brief excursion into something fresh, via the fast zombies, though it’s more an infection movie than one about the living dead, and focused more on the human element than the monstrous threat (and the only reason it’s not in this slot is because we already published a retrospective on both movies and how they impacted the zombie genre). Then, like a bloodied grandma screaming down a very long Spanish hallway, came [REC]: a found footage film that, in just over seventy minutes of screaming terror brought this flailing genre, ironically, back to life.
Written and directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, Rec follows a journalist, Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo as they follow a fire crew to an apartment building in which a slow-burn zombie outbreak is taking place. But it’s not exactly that premise that makes it such a standout of the 2000s horror scene – it is the way it is made.
Maybe you’ve heard my co-writer mention once or twice a 1999 classic called The Blair Witch Project. While not the first found footage film, The Blair Witch Project acted as a proof of concept for many filmmakers. Look at the tension created by seeing basically nothing for a whole film that the Blair Witch Project pulled off – the formula worked. Much like Die Hard resulted in many movies taking its premise and tweaking it, the same happened with The Blair Witch Project. Paranormal Activity was Blair Witch in a house. Cloverfield is Blair Witch with a giant fucking monster. [REC] is Blair Witch with zombies.
[REC] is successful in making the genre scary again due to its sheer, frantic sparsity. We are hurled into one building and quickly locked in there; we, in the guise of Pablo via the camera lens, are experiencing the stress of the people who live there, all of whom elicit sympathy because we are in there with them. The camerawork is chaotic, the snatches of horrifying violence disorientating, the atmosphere chaotic. And, more than anything, the most pivotal rule of found fiction is followed; there is no moment in Rec where we are think, “you should have put the camera down.” Angela and Pablo are journalists who, if they make it out, have the story of their career. When that becomes irrelevant, the camera is there to light their way and keeping the alive for that bit longer.
But the dead are not the only problem the buildings inhabitants have to face. The reason they are kept locked in is twofold. First, that the infection was contracted from a girl from Portugal possessed by a demon (DEMON ZOMBIES!) who has been abandoned in Barcelona by a priest from Madrid (I know who these two are supporting when El Classico comes around). That is terrifying enough, but there is also the matter of the Spanish government parked outside the door enacting as many emergency protocols that they can to keep these characters inside with all of the violent dead people. This is what Angela, Pablo, and the rest are up against. Their country is trapping them inside what is fast becoming a charnel house because of a screw-up by the church. This is the essence of the zombie movie since Romero got his hands on it – a ground-level document of the fears of a person, a city, and a country.
[REC] is a brilliant zombie movie, one that’s as much a testament to just how brilliantly found footage can be implemented across horror sub-genres as it is social and political commentary. And I’m sure you’ll have time to appreciate all that, after you’ve stopped screaming.
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By Kevin Boyle
Header Image: Deep Focus Review
