| REC | |
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Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Jaume Balagueró Paco Plaza |
| Produced by | Julio Fernández |
| Written by | Jaume Balagueró Luis A. Berdejo Paco Plaza |
| Starring | Manuela Velasco Ferrán Terraza Jorge-Yamam Serrano Pablo Rosso David Vert Vicente Gil Martha Carbonell Carlos Vicente María Teresa Ortega Manuel Bronchud Akemi Goto Chen Min Kao Maria Lanau Claudia Silva Javier Botet Ben Temple Carlos Lasarte |
| Cinematography | Pablo Rosso |
| Editing by | David Gallart |
| Distributed by | Filmax (Spain) Fox Searchlight Pictures (USA, 2011-present) |
| Release date(s) | 23 November 2007 |
| Running time | 78 minutes[1] |
| Country | Spain |
| Language | Spanish |
| Box office | $32,492,948[2] |
REC (stylised as [●REC]) is a 2007 Spanish horror film co-written and co-directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza.[3]
The film was released in Spain in November 2007. Balaguero and Plaza previously directed the 2002 documentary OT, The Movie. REC was filmed using shaky camerawork. The film was remade, practically shot-for-shot, in the United States as the 2008 film Quarantine. A sequel, titled REC 2 was released in 2009, and two more films in the franchise are planned.
As of 2011, Fox Searchlight Pictures, the independent film label of 20th Century Fox, purchased the international rights to the franchise and will also release future films in the United States, starting with REC 3.
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REC follows a television reporter, Ángela Vidal, and her cameraman, Pablo (whose face never showed on camera), who are covering the night shift in one of Barcelona's local fire stations for the fictional documentary television series While You're Asleep. 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. The woman, Mrs.Izquierdo, becomes extraordinarily aggressive and bites a policeman. Meanwhile, the terrified residents gather in the entrance hall and look on as the firefighters and military seal off the building. Alex, who remained in the old woman's apartment is bitten and plummets through the stairwell to the lobby floor. The camera crew, remaining police officer and Manu go up again and are attacked. The officer shoots the old woman. The camera crew remains trapped inside the building with the residents and continue recording in spite of firefighters pressure. Ángela interviews a little girl named Jennifer who lives in the building, along with the other residents of the building. Jennifer is ill with what her mother claims is tonsillitis. She says her dog, Max, is at the veterinarian because he appeared to be sick as well.
A health inspector wearing a hazmat suit arrives and attempts to treat the injured, who become suddenly and fiercely violent despite their critical injuries. The health inspector explains that 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 illness was taken to the 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. Jennifer, the girl who owned the dog, then suddenly vomits blood on her mother and runs upstairs, screaming. Officer cuffs the mother on the stairs and runs back with Manu to the old woman's apartment with injection that inspector gave him. Pablo goes with them and takes the camera. They search the rooms and they find Jennifer there. The officer bends on his knees next to Jennifer, trying to inject the vial, but suddenly she attacks him and bites him in the neck. Pablo and Manu run to the exit and the old lady shows up again, screaming. Manu hits her twice with a hammer, causing her to pass out. They hear an officer screaming and they run downstairs where they encounter Angela trying to close the door to the textil shop because infected are trying to get in the hallway. Pablo and Manu try to free Jennifer's mother, looking for the keys, but ironically, officer has the keys. They cannot and they leave her, running upstairs to the apartment. While heading into the nearest room, the japanese family, the grandmother and the grandfather are all bitten. The inspector tells the distraught residents that this unknown but virulent disease is infecting people, causing them to turn into bloodthirsty savages. More and more people in the building become infected, and Ángela 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 third 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 then search the penthouse and discover that its former owner was an agent of the Vatican who was charged with researching and isolating a suspected virus believed to be the biological cause of demonic possession, which was later confirmed to exist in a young girl who was possessed. The agent kidnapped and brought the girl to the penthouse to conduct his research and to possibly cure her; during this time the virus managed to mutate and become contagious. The agent decided to seal her off, presumably to let her die of starvation and dehydration. A door to the attic opens and Pablo uses his camera to look inside. An infected jumps at the camera and breaks its light. Pablo turns on the night vision to see in the dark and discovers the sealed door referred to earlier by the agent on an audio tape. The agent abandoned his efforts to cure the girl after failing to engineer a vaccine and sealed her in the room before leaving the city. The girl, now a ghoulishly emaciated figure, begins searching the kitchen area, unaware of Ángela and Pablo's presence. Pablo tries to escape, but trips and is viciously attacked by the girl, causing Pablo to drop the camera. Ángela picks it up and runs, only to trip and drop the camera as well. She searches for it but is unable to find it. The camera continues to record as the screams of the infected girl are heard on the tape recorder and Ángela is dragged into the darkness, screaming. In the film's final seconds, an audio clip from earlier in the film is repeated in which Ángela forcefully instructs Pablo to film so as to record all the evidence.
The film premiere was in August 2007 at the 64th Venice International Film Festival, out of competition. It was also shown in October at the Sitges Film Festival [4] and at the Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema in November, before going on general release in Spain later that month. It was also shown in February 2008 at the Glasgow Film Festival and had a UK release in April.
It was released on DVD in North America in 2009.
REC received acclaim from most critics. As of May 17, 2009, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 20 reviews.[5] 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 "[Rec] will definitely jangle the nerves", while criticising the lack of substance and "one-dimensional" supporting cast.[6]
Bloody Disgusting gave the film four and a half stars out of five, with the reviewer saying, "[REC] has it all and is probably one of the best Spanish horror films in recent memory."[7] Bloody Disgusting later ranked the film eleventh in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "Out of all the “shaky-cam” films... this one is arguably the best."[8]
It also received a number of awards:
The sequel, REC 2, premiered in September 2009, at the Venice Film Festival, and was commercially released in Spain in October. The sequel deals with the events immediately following the end of the first film.
Two more movies have been announced, [REC]3 Génesis and [[REC]4 Apocalipsis]], set to be released in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Quarantine, an American remake of the Spanish film, was produced, practically shot-for-shot, and released in the United States in October 2008.
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