[REC]

[DarkImbecile]

28 Days Later meets The Blair Witch Project as a mysterious virus turns the inhabitants of an apartment building into a horde of frenzied, bloodthirsty ghouls in [REC] - the original 2007 “found footage” phenomenon that spawned a hit franchise and US remake.

A television film crew, documenting the night shift of a Barcelona fire brigade, get much more than they bargained for when they attend an apparently routine call-out. Upon arrival at an inner city apartment, the firefighters are viciously attacked by the elderly female occupant, who appears to be in the throes of some sort of viral infection. Before long, the virus has taken hold of the entire building, which is cordoned off by the authorities. Trapped inside, the television crew - using their cameras to capture the events as they unfold - and the other remaining survivors find themselves pitched into a nightmare of unimaginable proportions.

Fusing the zombie genre with the “found footage” format to throw the audience right into the midst of the action, [REC] is a terrifying, relentless rollercoaster ride which builds to one of the horror genre’s all time bone-chilling climaxes.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• High Definition Blu-ray presentation with two viewing options: the "theatrical version" (24fps, 1080p, 78 mins) as shown in cinemas, and the "production version" (25fps, 1080i, 75 mins) as originally filmed
• Original Spanish DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 audio options on both versions
• Optional English subtitles
• New audio commentary by film critic and historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, author of Found Footage Horror: Fear and the Appearance of Reality
• Archive commentary by directors Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza
• The Making of [REC], an archive featurette examining the process of production featuring interviews with cast & crew
• How to Shoot a Horror Movie, a French-language featurette presented by directors Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza
• Archive interview with Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza looking back on the film
• The Fantastic Four, an archive panel discussion with [REC] directors Jaume Balaguero, Paco Plaza and new wave Spanish horror contemporaries Gonzalo Lopez Callego and Juan Antonio Bayona
• On set footage of the cast & crew at work on key scenes including “the attack on Mrs. Izquierdo” and the “climb to hell”
• Archive interview with director of photography Pablo Rosso
• Archive interview with sound supervisor Xavi Mas
• Archive interview with sound designer Oriol Tarragó
• Confidences, a video diary by star Manuela Velasco
• Deleted and extended scenes, including “Fire Station Redux”, “The Secret Archive” and “Corridors of Nails”
• Casting, original video footage from the audition process
• Trailers and TV spots
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Adam Rabalais
  FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collectors' booklet with new writing on the film by Xavier Aldana Reyes

[therewillbeblus]

One of the few found-footage horrors I actually enjoyed, and even though I normally detest the genre, I'm curious to hear what looks to be an academic commentary by an expert on the subgenre

[Adam X]

Alex really know her stuff, too. It should be a good listen.

[Finch]

My favourite horror film of the Aughts. Pity it's not a new transfer, not even in 2k.

[Thornycroft]

My favourite horror film of the Aughts. Pity it's not a new transfer, not even in 2k.

I was under the impression the film was shot digitally at 1080i, hence the inclusion of the 'production version' running at a higher frame rate. The production specs on IMDb (for what good they're worth) list it as being shot on DVCPRO HD - the final line of Panasonic's broadcast quality DV formats before they phased out magnetic tape entirely.

[colinr0380]

Whilst I did like the film initially, I am feeling even fonder to [REC] now that it seems to have made its influence felt over the last decade. Whilst the Blair Witch Project really kicked the found footage trend off [REC], despite borrowing a bit from the night vision climax of The Silence of the Lambs, feels like it perfected the 'final act' of such a film, or at least showed every film that came afterwards from The Visit and The Last Exorcism to The Chernobyl Diaries what they should be doing with their dropped cameras in the final moments. Also it went a bit beyond Blair Witch by showing that you can both have shakeycam visuals but also combine them with visual effects and a fresh twist on old genres, with Cloverfield still a year off at that point. Although I think [REC] (and Cloverfield) still stand up as having pulled it off the best out of anything that came after (though I still need to see As Above, So Below and The Pyramid. Lots of intrepid, maybe recklessly stupid and therefore deserving of whatever situation they get themselves into, adventurers feature in these films). Maybe it also played a role in kicking off the 'crazy, maybe demonic elderly grandma wandering around darkened corridors in her undergarments' trend too!

I went back to the previous thread and thought I would re-post the old comment here:

An excellent post on the film from the Spectacular Attractions blog. I added a comment to the end of the article:

Angela, the reporter who stays on camera for most of the running time, transforms from a keen but slightly jaded young woman (she’d clearly prefer to be covering a major news story instead of asking what firemen have for dinner) into a voracious newsgatherer, constantly exhorting her cameraman to “shoot everything.”

I’d agree in the sense that I get the impression that Angela does want to be that kind of voracious reporter - after all, isn’t the main reason camera crews tag around with the police, fire and ambulance crews the chance to capture a violent, dangerous or degrading ‘real life’ situation for the viewers to enjoy from the safety of their homes? (Could we also consider REC as being a kind of post 9/11 film, since that documentary covering the day by those French filmmakers began as a portrait of the daily activities of a New York fire crew and then took on the extra significance due to the timing?)

I would sort of characterise her as a reporter from a programme aimed at children who has an opportunity to start doing reports for adult audiences and is not yet entirely comfortable with speaking to an older group of people. This is likely just my own interpretation but I guess it would speak to her ambition (it may only be a small step up to handling a programme about night workers but she may be hoping to move onto the main news eventually) as well as her seeming a little out of her depth even in the early scenes at the fire station with a rather forced matey banter.

Perhaps another good comparison would be to Sarah Greene in Ghostwatch, where she brings all her children’s presenter baggage to a more adult 'show', yet still retains her child friendly banter and persona.

It never strikes me as if Angela has a handle on her situation once things spiral out of control with the first attack by the old lady. Up until then she is stage managing, keeping upbeat and affirming the order of society to her viewers (and us), but after things are taken out of her control she seems to be more of a broken woman. Or rather she retreats to just shooting everything with some futile attempts at ‘creating a narrative’ out of her world focused on the authorities outside and getting character profiles from the other inhabitants of the building.

One of the interesting things about these films would seem to be that the shooting of footage is to “let someone know what is going on here”, but more than just narcissism it would seem to provide the character filming with a purpose in the story and often it seems to cause them to act with omnipotence, as if because they are filming the events through a camera there is no possibility of their being in any actual danger (whether that is taken as a statement about the blurring between reality and illusion - between ‘documentary’ and fictionalising for effect, or whether it could be seen more as people not feeling threatened by anything they see on a screen and going on to actively place that barrier between themselves and actual events to try and protect themselves might be interesting to discuss).

It makes sense then that the final sequences of Blair Witch, Cannibal Holocaust, Rec, Cloverfield and so on all end with that security of the camera operators being destroyed as they are killed. The finality of this could just be due to practical considerations (once the person filming has been killed who will continue to film?), but it also feels as if it is a necessary lesson for our characters to learn - that there is no inherent security through being the person wielding the camera, only for the audience who later view the footage you leave behind. Perhaps a good early example of this idea might be John Savage’s photographer in Salvador who is killed while trying to get the best photograph of a plane strafing a village with gunfire.

In that sense there is no ‘final girl’ in these horror films any more - the audience now fulfills the role of the one who carries on with the knowledge of the events that have occurred by watching the tape.

The message I take away from these films is very similar to, if not as bluntly expressed as in, Cannibal Holocaust. If you don’t have respect for what you are filming, whether it is a lion or tiger in the jungle, a warzone or even a possessed apartment block, then you are likely to be brutally killed through your underestimation. Though just going into such environments in the first place already signifies a lack of respect, or at least an intention to exploit tragic events for your own gain, that marks such characters for an inevitable final reel death.

[Adam X]

(though I still need to see As Above, So Below)

Best of luck with that, Colin. I know I've seen postive things written about the film, but I didn't make it 10 minutes into it before i turned it off. From memory, there's not a single postive thing I could say about it, though sometimes a film can just catch you at the wrong time.

I can, however, recommend the similarly located Australian film The Tunnel, made a few years earlier, though budget & acting-wise, it's much more at the Blair Witch-end of the scale.

[JamesF]

My favourite horror film of the Aughts. Pity it's not a new transfer, not even in 2k.

I was under the impression the film was shot digitally at 1080i, hence the inclusion of the 'production version' running at a higher frame rate. The production specs on IMDb (for what good they're worth) list it as being shot on DVCPRO HD - the final line of Panasonic's broadcast quality DV formats before they phased out magnetic tape entirely.

It's not mentioned in the announcement specs, but the "theatrical" and "production" versions are in fact going to be presented via different HD masters. The 25fps "production" version is the same HD master previously released in the UK and elsewhere on Blu-ray (including the US release by Scream Factory), which is sourced from the original digital intermediate. The 24fps "theatrical" version, on the other hand, is presented via a subsequent 'film-out'-sourced master (made at the directors' request) that has a grainier look more authentic to its original cinema release, which I don't believe has been released on any Blu-ray before. So whatever your preference is, you're covered either way!

[tenia]

Interesting ! I also thought it was just because the movie was shot digitally at 25fps and the release would provide this alternative.

[Finch]

Thanks for that, James. I'm very much looking forward to the disc.

[Murdoch]

I think this is a decent zombie movie but I never understood the adoration it received. It's structured very well in terms of how it uses its enclosed space and gradually forces its characters upward. It also is the rare found footage movie that gives an explanation for a character always filming (in my mind Blair Witch Project is the only other member of the subgenre that justifies its filming approach by presenting itself as a condensed version of days of filmed wandering and arguments). But for me the stylistic choice of found footage here elevated a rather run of the mill monster movie by injecting the sense of immediacy that the first-person perspective inherently comes with. It's fun to revisit around this time of year but I think Blair Witch and the Poughkeepsie Tapes are more effective examples of the subgenre.

[tenia]

I don't think it's any masterpiece but you certainly described accurately why it works so well and why it felt (and probably still feels) very clever and an elevation through found footage style of an otherwise quite stereotypical script. It's simply smart, tense and effective, which is actually already a lot.