Fantastic Fest 2009: ‘[Rec] 2’ Review

WARNING: since this is a direct sequel to [rec], there will be spoilers for [rec] in this review.

[rec] is one of the scariest horror films of the past ten years and my personal favorite horror film of all time. For those who don’t know, [rec] tells the story of a news lady and her camera crew as they are doing a late night feature on firefighters. Of course, this quickly turns into a disaster when the firefighters are called to a building which just happens to have an outbreak of what seem like zombies. [rec] 2 picks up just seconds after the first film ends, as a swat team comes to the same building to take care of the mess that was made in the first movie. Or, at least that’s what they think. The real plot of the movie isn’t revealed until later, but suffice to say it gets a little deeper than typical “zombies” and quite a bit more interesting.

While the entirety of [rec] was shot from the perspective of a single news camera, [rec] 2 puts you primarily inside the helmets of the swat team. The majority of the movie takes place from the team videographer, since the mission is deemed so important that they need archival footage from it. This swat member is, for the most part, weaponless, and sticks back behind the main force of the team. However, any time they need to send a single member off on his own, for example: to crawl into a tight space where only one person will fit, the video taps into that members helmet, giving us a grainier and more ‘first person shooter-ish’ point of view. This helps spice things up visually, and keeps us from thinking, “why are they still filming?”

If you don’t like to be scared, this is not the movie for you. It’s creepy, atmospheric, and dives right into the horror within the first five minutes. Making the main characters of the movie part of a military operation means that they get right up in the creatures’ faces, unlike [rec] where the news crew tended to stay back as much as possible. A lot of the creepyness stems from the creatures jumping right at the camera, which is a great scare tactic that obviously isn’t possible in a more typical horror film. There are very few moments in this movie where you feel safe, and luckily directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza manage to keep the tension from getting stale throughout.

Aside from the perspective of the swat team, [rec] 2 takes us into the views of several other cameras which show us the same parts of the story from different vantage points. On paper, this is a good idea, and for the most part, it is. However, the first time we cut away from the swat team is such a jarring difference, that it ends up being the weakest part of the movie. For a this portion of the movie, we follow around a group of people who are filming with a camcorder, and for a good part of this there are no creatures present and the group of people are completely unaware of any supernatural  occurrences. There is a bit of a jarring contrast between this and the swat team, since we leave a group of characters that are very interesting and taking on creatures on a regular basis to follow a regular group of people that act stupid and are very annoying. As I watched this segment, I really wanted these people to die as soon as possible. Luckily, after a boring ten minutes or so, we kick back into the greatness of the beginning of the film, which continues on until the end.

Although the entire film is shot digitally and is meant to have an amateur sort of look, the cinematography is fantastic, and the long takes in the movie are very impressive. Unlike films such as Cloverfield, which put some people off due to the shakyness of the camera work, at least 90 percent of [rec] 2 is very smooth and realistic with the concept that they’re going for. The acting, as well, is top notch, and I really believed that these people were the characters they were portraying and not actors.

I’ve been telling people to see [rec] ever since I saw it, and I feel the same way about [rec] 2. It’s a great sequel, and manages to stay fresh, despite taking place in the exact same place as the original.