REC (movie)

REC (stylized as [REC]) is a 2007 Spanish found footage supernatural zombie horror film written and directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The film was shot in Barcelona, Spain, and was filmed as a found footage film and used a "shaky camera" technique. REC follows the night of a young reporter, Ángela Vidal, and her cameraman Pablo as they join a group of firemen during their night of work to an apartment building and end up quarantined there, with a terryfying virus spreading inside.

As the first installment of the REC series, it was followed by three sequels; REC 2 in 2009, REC 3: Genesis in 2012, and REC 4 in 2014 as the final installment in the franchise. Spanish company Filmax International is responsible for the production of the REC franchise and released all four installments.

Storyline
A television reporter, Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco), and her cameraman Pablo, who cover the night shift in one of Barcelona's local fire stations for the fictional documentary television series While You're Sleeping. In the firehouse, the team meets Álex and Manu. While they are recording, the firehouse receives a call about an old woman who is trapped in her apartment. When they arrive, Ángela and Pablo film the police breaking down the door. As they approach the old woman, she becomes aggressive and attacks one of the police officers, forcing the others to restrain her.

Meanwhile, the building's residents gather in the lobby and look on as the police and military seal off the building. Álex, who remained in the old woman's apartment suddenly plummets through the stairwell to the lobby floor. Pablo, Manu and the second policeman go up again and are attacked, forcing the officer to shoot Mrs. Izquierdo. The camera crew remains trapped inside the building with the residents and continue recording. Ángela interviews a little girl named Jennifer who lives in the building. Jennifer is ill with what her mother, Mari Carmen, claims is tonsillitis. She says her dog, Max, is at the veterinarian because he appeared to be sick as well, and her father is out buying her needed medicine.

Soon, a health inspector wearing a hazmat suit arrives and attempts to treat the injured, Álex an the older cop, who become aggressive and are locked inside the building's textile warehouse. The health inspector explains that they are infected with a virus similar to rabies, and the time frame in which the disease takes effect varies by blood type. The health inspector also reveals that sometime during the previous day, a dog with the virus was taken to a local veterinarian; the dog became violent and attacked and killed other pets at the clinic. The dog was euthanized, and was traced back to the apartment building. Ángela suddenly realizes that the dog was Max and belonged to Jennifer, the sick child she interviewed earlier. The other residents surround Jennifer and her mother Mari Carmen, and are questioning them about the dog, when Jennifer suddenly vomits blood all over her mother's face, jumps out of her arms and runs upstairs.

The policeman handcuffs Mari Carmen to the stairs and proceeds upstairs with the firefighter Manu. They find Jennifer, and the officer tries to calmly subdue her with a syringe that the inspector gave him, but she bites him and he tells the others to leave him behind as he is now infected. Manu and Pablo run outside where they find that the infected are trying to break into the main hallway through the textile warehouse. They are forced to leave the handcuffed Mari Carmen, since the now-infected officer has the keys, and they run upstairs into an apartment. More and more people in the building become infected, and Ángela, Manu and Pablo are forced to fight them off. Eventually they learn that there is a key to a door in the apartment building workshop, which leads to an exit via the sewer system. However, the key is located on the fifth floor in the manager's apartment.

After finding the key, Ángela and Pablo appear to be the only human survivors, everyone else being dead or infected. Rather than making their way to the workshop, they are forced upstairs to the penthouse by the remaining infected. They search the penthouse and discover that its owner was an agent of the Vatican who was charged with researching and isolating an enzyme believed to be the biological cause of demonic possession, which was later confirmed to exist in a Portuguese young girl named Tristana Medeiros.

A door to the attic opens and Pablo uses his camera to look inside. An infected boy jumps at the camera and breaks its light. Pablo turns on the night vision and discovers the sealed door referred to by the agent on an audio tape. Tristana, now a blind and horribly emaciated figure, emerges and begins searching the penthouse, holding a hammer. Ángela and Pablo try to escape, but Pablo trips and is viciously attacked by Tristana, causing him to drop the camera. Ángela picks it up and runs, only to fall and drop the camera as well. She searches for it in the dark but is unable to find it. The camera continues to record as Ángela is dragged into the darkness, screaming.

Cast

 * Manuela Velasco - Ángela Vidal
 * Ferrán Terraza - Manu
 * Jorge-Yaman Serrano - Young policeman
 * Pablo Rosso - Pablo
 * David Vert - Álex
 * Vicente Gil - Adult policemen
 * Martha Carbonell - Mrs. Izquierdo
 * Carlos Vicente - Guillem Marimón
 * María Teresa Ortega - Grandmother
 * Manuel Bronchud - Grandfather
 * Akemi Goto - Japanese woman
 * Chen Min Kao - Japanese man
 * María Lanau - Mari Carmen
 * Claudia Silva - Jennifer
 * Carlos Lasarte - César
 * Javier Botet - Tristana Medeiros
 * Ben Temple - Doctor
 * Ana Velasquez - Colombian girl
 * Daniel Trinh - Japanese boy
 * Marita Borrego - Operadoras Cuartel Bomberos
 * Jana Prats - Operadoras Cuartel Bomberos (as Ana Prats)
 * Víctor Massagué - Boy in the attic
 * Javier Coromina - Pablo

Release
The film premiered in August 2007 at the 64th Venice International Film Festival, out of competition, in the opening and closing films sessions. It was also shown in October 2007 at the Sitges Film Festival and the Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema in November 2007, before going on general release in Spain later that month.

The film was also shown in February 2008 at the Glasgow Film Festival and the co-directors participated in a corresponding interview in which they revealed their influences during the creation of the cinema work: "Our main reference was TV; was not other films, or a tradition of previous features. I think the main influence for us was TV. What we wanted was to build a classic horror story, but, ahh, telling it in the way of a TV show." REC was then released in the United Kingdom in April 2008 and a North American DVD release occurred in 2009.

Reception
REC received widespread acclaim from most critics. As of July 30, 2012, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that, based on 23 reviews, the film has a nearly universal 96% approval rating.

Reviewing the film for the BBC, Jamie Russell called it "A runaway rollercoaster of a fright flick", praising the "faux-docu handheld style", and the sense of claustrophobia and confusion, claiming that "[Rec] will definitely jangle the nerves"; however, Russell criticised the lack of substance and a "one-dimensional" supporting cast. Bloody Disgusting awarded the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, with the reviewer writing, "[REC] has it all and is probably one of the best Spanish horror films in recent memory." Bloody Disgusting later ranked the film eleventh in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article stating: "Out of all the “shaky-cam” films... this one is arguably the best." In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. Rec placed at number 54 on their top 100 list.

Continuity

 * The news reports Ángela and Pablo find in the attic about the Medeiros girl are made clear in the sequel.
 * The curious teenagers get inside the building through the underground passage mentioned by César. It is revealed that it actually did not require keys, and he only needed to remember the passage a bit earlier.
 * Father Alberta fails to prevent the virus from escaping out of darkness, as revealed in Rec: Histórias Inéditas. How he managed to take the possessed Tristana upstairs without none of the residents noticing, as well as attracting the missing children there, remain unclear.
 * Jennifer's father appears in the sequel.
 * The fates of the Japanese couple's young son, his supposed ill grandfather and the elderly couple remain unknown.
 * Jennifer's infected dog Max causes a simultaneous outbreak that happens in the wedding party of Clara and Koldo, as his veterinarian uncle is bitten by the dog and infects their guests. A TV newsreport on the quaratined building is broadcasted there, but goes unoticed by Koldo.

Notes and trivia

 * Director Paco Plaza reportedly had chinese neighbors that never closed their door. This always intrigued him.
 * The actors did not know Álex would fall to the ground floor. They are purposely sent back by the old cop moments before.
 * Ana Isabel Velasquez, who plays the Colombian girl, appeared as Clara and Koldo's guest Wendy in Genesis. Her scene, however, was deleted.
 * Pablo Rosso returns as the GEO cameraman Rosso in the sequel.
 * An alternate ending in which Ángela attempts to silently go down the staircase with the infrared, until she is finally devoured by the infected was shot but left out of the final cut.
 * Jennifer is featured in a teaser trailer being taken away from the building by a group of firemen.
 * With the exception of Álex and Manu, the men in the dinner scene are real all firemen.
 * Some of the considered titles were Orígen, 70 Minutos and Duracíon: 70 Minutos.
 * Due to the extremelly shaky camera moves, most of the infected make-up can not be seen on screen. A particular example is the young cop's ripped ear.
 * The Medeiros girl character was named after singer Glenn Medeiros.
 * Ángela and Pablo's show is reminiscent of the Argentine television programme La Liga. It has been adapted to Spanish audiences as 1 Equipo.
 * Up until the release of the sequel, both Balagueró and Plaza were unaware of a curious decorative sculpture on the top of the building depicting a monster grabbing a woman by her foot, which is strongly similar to the final scene of the film.
 * The Japanese title for the American remake Quarantine is REC. The sequel Quarantine 2: Terminal is also titled REC 2.
 * Actor Javier Botet, who playes the Medeiros creature, appeared in the Guillermo Del Toro production as the title character in Mama. Guillermo Del Toro frequently casts Doug Jones, who portrays the creature in the American remake Quarantine, in his horror films.
 * The film ends with the building plagued by its infected occupants, making it seemingly impossible for Pablo and Ángela do descend. However, the infected remain mostly hidden in the sequels, and the characters are able to go up and down loosely for some time before they get attacked.
 * The building they used for Rec 1, 2, and 4 is a real building in Barcelona,
 * Most of the scenes were improvised, and the actors weren't given a completed script for the movie in order to show more genuine reactions instead of overacted scenes.
 * When the columbian woman attacks Angela, they almost crashed through a window.
 * Angela was played by real Spanish TV presenter Manuela Velasco, so that the role could be more naturally played.
 * The ending scene used real night vision, and was recorded in real darkness.

Accolades

 * Reaper Award 2009
 * Won: Best Indie/Foreign production
 * 2008 Goya Awards (22 edition)
 * Won: Goya Best New Actress (Manuela Velasco), Goya Best Editing (David Gallart)
 * Nomination: Goya Best Special Effects (David Ambid, Enric Masip and Álex Villagrasa)
 * Fantasporto 2008
 * Won: Grand Prix Fantasporto, Audience Jury Award
 * Fantastic'Arts 2008
 * Won: Special Jury Prize, Youth Jury Grand Prize, Audience Award
 * Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival 2008
 * Won: Silver Scream Award
 * Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain 2008
 * Nominated: CEC Award Best Editing, CEC Award Best New Artist
 * European Film Awards 2008
 * Nominated: Audience Award Best Film
 * Fant-Asia Film Festival 2008
 * 2nd place: Best European/North - South American Film Best Film, Fantasia Ground-Breaker Award Best Film
 * Festival de Cine de Sitges 2007
 * Won: Best Director Award, Best Actress Award (Manuela Velasco), Audience Award El Periódico de Catalunya - Best Motion Picture, Jose Luis Guarner Critic Award, Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver - Special Mention