Have I been anything but completely honest with you?

 

Have I ever recommended anything to you that I didn't honestly, truly enjoy?

 

Have I ever told you to stay away from anything that I didn't feel had significant benefit in its avoidance?

 

Because I realize my opinion frequently seems to run contrary to popular consensus. This may make me seem like I'm trying to be “cool” or argumentative. By criticizing films that everyone loves, it may seem like I am attempting to make myself seem “better” by emphasizing the flaws of these films.

I'm not. I promise you. If you only look back at my some of my other articles, you should know that I do everything I can to give these movies a fair shake, and that I have only perfectly valid reasons for disliking them. I go into every movie I see wanting to love it; wanting to enjoy myself. And despite my positive attitude, some movies still fail me. Jaume Balaguero's film is one of those failures. I knew that as soon as it was finished, before I had any idea that people almost exclusively thought otherwise.

[Rec] is one of those movies like Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield that are shot completely on digital handheld cameras, and are meant to mimic real-life accounts of terrifying situations. Blair Witch in its time was an effective little horror flick, and I appreciated the spin that Matt Reeves put on the giant monster movie with Cloverfield. These are effective pictures. So, it is not [Rec]'s technique that I question. It is its execution.

[Rec] gets its scares primarily through the use of what I like to call cinematic manipulation. It preys on the clichés of movies that have come before it, so the viewer is scared by aesthetic of scary, rather than by something genuine. Much like Patch Adams attempts to manipulate its audience to cry, not because you actually feel anything for the characters, but because the protagonist has a compelling, self-revealing monologue while attempting to choke back tears, and the music swells in such a way, and then a quick cut to a cancer-riddled child who's crying too, and…

 

[Rec] will scan an area in almost complete darkness.

 

There is a steady bass rumbling on the soundtrack.

 

Nobody dares make a sound.

 

Then WHAMMO, a scary what-have-you jumps out with a terrifying scream! Heart rate is up, popcorn is everywhere, and copious applause abounds.

Or how about a scene when the main character is attempting to escape the monsters, and can't find the right keys to the door to safety. Hurry up! They're coming! Oh! The keys are dropped! Oh no! They're right behind you! Hurry! And then just in the nick of time, they dive into the room and slam the door on their would-be attacker. Phew! That was a close one.

Or any number of scenes where the lights don't work, and the film must rely on the digicam's inexplicably unreliable flashlight. Or the microphone gets bumped, so everything sounds distorted and scary. Or the various convoluted reasons that our heroes must go from one area of relative safety to another of certain death. [Rec] not only refuses to do anything different to make it stand apart from its Blair Witch like brethren, but it adds nothing new to the horror genre.

Should I even get into the inconsistencies of its film style, or would that be just picking on it at this point? Because I could mention the act of rewinding the tape not making any sense in context. (How is the video both rewinding AND recording at the same time? What purpose did the director(s) think this serves?). I could go into these inconsistencies further, but that would become merely another list of inadequacies that I don't feel the need to expound on. If the movie doesn't even know what plane of reality that it is on, then how can I believe it?

And why is it that so many horror directors today refuse to challenge their audiences? And as I suppose both an answer to that question and a far more important one, why is it that audiences seem to prefer not being challenged? Is it too much to ask to be scared by something other than technique? Because I don't think it's unfair of me to expect at this point.

The punch line to this review is released in North America on October 10, 2008. It is called Quarantine and yes, it is an American remake of this film. If there's anything worse than regurgitated cinematic garbage, it's that America gratuitously consumes it and dutifully vomits it back up.