![[REC] poster](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/hgyJR4sgMsee6xMFM3xYiG6cDCh.jpg)
[REC] (2007)
Directed by Jaume Balagueró
A television reporter and cameraman follow emergency workers into a dark apartment building and are quickly locked inside with something terrifying.
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What critics compared [REC] to
Inspiration for the picture's style, told completely from the POV of a character's camera, likely comes from 1999's " The Blair Witch Project ."
Though it admittedly takes a while to get going, [REC] ultimately establishes itself as the most effective first-person horror effort since The Blair Witch Project - as the film boasts a number of brutal and unexpectedly creepy interludes that instantly set it apart from its stylistically-similar yet thoroughly inferior brethren (ie Diary of the Dead, Cloverfield, etc).
[REC] uses the same first-person camera conceit as The Blair Witch Project by way of Diary of the Dead, but this time locks it in a building quarantined by the authorities because of a possible viral outbreak – the zombie virus, for lack of a medical term.
Like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield before it, [Rec] is told entirely through the lens of a video camera.
Of course, any edifice can probably be made menacing with the right angles and proper lighting — for instance, the 2007 Spanish gem [REC] managed to turn a Barcelona apartment building into Hell on Earth — but director Gary Dauberman and cinematographer Michael Burgess find more menace in the early-‘70s décor than they do in any of the horrific happenings.
Second, this is a found footage horror film, a subgenre that hasn’t been viable since [REC] reinvented it back in 2007.
In [Rec] (2007) Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza experimented with film form to present a ‘found footage’ zombie film.
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As of this writing in October 2008, mere days before the release of its obligatory U.S. remake, " Quarantine ," the Spanish-language "[REC]" has yet to be released in America.
It was remade in the U.S. as Quarantine.
If you've seen a bootleg copy of Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's [Rec] then you've already seen this film, since it is almost a shot for shot remake of that one .
At least the horrors, as adapted for American by sibling filmmakers John Erick and Drew Dowdle from the Spanish film [Rec], are fairly hair-raising.
Like just about every horror film since The Ring, it's also a remake of a recent foreign fright flick, in this case the 2007 Spanish chiller [Rec].
Quarantine is a Hollywood remake of the Spanish horror film [Rec] (a reference to the “record” button on a hand-held video camera).
![[REC]³ Genesis poster](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/tI1534q0Up7PBcLdXdFerLmIXn3.jpg)
Not only did their [REC] revitalize even the most cynical scary movie fan’s faith in their favorite film type, but their equally ambitious and masterful [REC]2 managed the unfathomable feat of expanding on the established mythology while making its own case for creepshow classicism.
[REC] and [REC] 2 used the usual limits of faux found footage—low image quality, erratic camera movement, deliberately wonky framing, etc.—to heighten tension and obscure the threats within an apartment building infested with a particularly improbable form of zombie virus.
Paco Plaza, who co-wrote and co-directed both [REC] (remade in the U.S. as Quarantine in 2008) and [REC] 2 with Jaume Balagueró, takes the reins alone here, and the result is briskly efficient and handsomely photographed (by the serendipitously named Pablo Rosso, who also worked on the previous two installments).
Paco Plaza turns his [REC] franchise on its rotting head with [REC]3: Genesis, switching up the series' blistering first-person-perspective terror for a more conventional, jokey and—much to the film's detriment—self-conscious approach.
[Rec]�: Genesis is a jarring and somewhat unwelcome shift into comedic territory for the successful Spanish found footage zombie series (which has further inspired the Quarantine films in the United States).
Where the first two [REC] films relied on claustrophobic tension and shaky camera to impress, the third film goes for a more conventional format that's backed by dark laughs and in-your-face violence.
But Balagueró—best known for directing the first two parts of the [Rec] series—has a fine control of pacing and tone, and is able to keep Sleep Tight gripping throughout, right up its shocking final act.
Much like Jaume Balagueró’s telemovie Films To Keep You Awake: To Let and his shakicam shockers [Rec] and [Rec]2 (both co-directed with Paco Plaza), Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes) concerns characters locked in an apartment building with an unwelcome presence – only this time round, the focus is less on the perspective of the victims than of their persecutor, a frighteningly human kind of monster whose intrusive voyeurism (and worse) we are rather uncomfortably made to share.
Jaume Balagueró directed [Rec] , a highly effective horror film largely confined to a block of gloomy Barcelona flats plagued by carnivorous zombies.
[REC] director Jaume Balaguero forges what could be the start of a brilliant partnership with Luis Tosar in Sleep Tight, an immaculately-constructed, devilishly disturbing and wickedly funny thriller that mates Hitchcockian suspense with a specifically Polanski-esque brand of terror.
But in the hands of [REC] director Jaume Balagueró (breaking out of Spain’s inventive horror ghetto with a subtler project), the setup slowly takes on an ick factor, as homely, balding caretaker César (Luis Tosar) spends too much time staring at bouncy Barcelonian Clara (Marta Etura).
But the genius of [REC] director Jaume Balagueró’s latest is that it plumbs the depths of human darkness with such an extraordinary lightness of touch, it manages to entertain even as it shows an innocent woman falling inexorably apart.
The men who dug deeper: director Paco Plaza (one half of the duo behind contemporary horror classic [REC]) and co-writer Fernando Navarro.
Veronica, a Spanish-language horror movie from the director of [REC], is about a young woman who tries to contact her dead father during a solar eclipse.
Set in Nineties Madrid and directed by Paco Plaza, the man behind the excellent [Rec], it starts promisingly.
Director Paco Plaza has been known as a filmmaking force in the horror genre with his [REC] film franchise.
We don't talk about the third [Rec] movie, but his returning to the fold with a full-on Ouija-gone-wrong film is something to celebrate.
As one half of the directing tandem responsible for the Spanish [REC] horror franchise, Paco Plaza has a reputation to maintain.