Many found-footage horror movies invent an awkward reason for the camera to always be “on.” The Spanish import REC devises a compellingly moral one. While accompanying a pair of firefighters on a routine call for a television puff piece, reporter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman (Pablo Roso) get quarantined in an apartment building along with the firefighters, two policemen, and the residents. Outside, via megaphone, the authorities give them vague explanations, even refusing to send help when a distressed older woman in the building severely bites one of the cops. “We have to show what’s happening,” Angela tells her cameraman, believing she’ll eventually get out and deliver an expose on the decision to keep them contained. Unfortunately, she doesn’t yet realize she’s in a zombie movie. Directed by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, who wrote the script with Luiso Berdejo, REC is an honorable installment in that subgenre, combining the claustrophobia of Night of the Living Dead with an intimate fear of infection. (As soon as you learn that a little girl living in the building has tonsilitis, you know her story isn’t going to end well.) However, it’s the moral imperative of the found-footage formalism that sets REC apart, transforming Angela’s camera from a visceral instrument of voyeurism into a tragic, last-gasp tool of truth and justice.
(5/28/2022)
