Thursday 11 July 2013

Stars: 3 / 10

No scares here, but what you do get is : realistic blood, 65 minutes of continuous shouting, repetitive and pointless dialogue, jolting handheld POV, an uninventive plot, and outright boredom. The final scene is the only bit worth half a crap, and contained the only creepiness to be found in this otherwise banal, if not disastrous film.



IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038988/?ref_=sr_4

Director: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Year: 2007
Main Cast: Manuela Velasco, Ferran Terraza, Jorge-Yamam Serrano, Pablo Rosso


Trailer




Extended Review:

[REC] could have been cut to a 15 min. short. If you remove the loop of  noisy and repetitive panic ("what's happening?!!", "stay in the hall !!", "calm down !!" repeat, repeat, repeat) that makes up the majority of this film, you'd have 3 short scenes, with a moderately creepy (albeit predictable) conclusion. Listening to the entire cast scream over each other on a dialogue feedback loop for 65 minutes, as seen through a bouncing handheld camera is hardly what I'd call entertaining.

A couple of stars do go to this movie for really nice gore effects, which seemed to be the main drain of their meagre $1m budget. The blood does look real, as do the flesh wounds... and Javier Botet's shrivelled boobies. Kudos.

The set design for the final scene is worth nodding to, as well. Good job, set design crew! Too bad your talents were wasted on this borefest.

By the way, if you're susceptible to motion sickness, you'll really want to skip this one. The handheld camera jostling is exceptionally jittery and bouncy. Blergk.

0 comments :

Post a Comment