[REC] 3: Genesis (2012)

Ever since I first saw The Blair Witch Project thirteen years ago, I've had something of a fascination with "found footage" movies. I've sat down and watched a ton of the good, the bad, and the ugly that found footage has to offer, and I've never grown tired of them. And that's one of the big reasons why, during one of my sadly infrequent ventures into the world of internationally-made horror movies, my eye was caught by the Spanish zombie movie [REC]. The first time I saw [•REC], it absolutely scared the pants off of me. And it's effective enough that it still scares me even though I've seen it multiple times now.

I'm surely not the only one who feels that way, because it very quickly got both an American remake and a sequel. The remake was basically the cinematic equivalent of a mediocre cover song, but [REC] 2 was a great flick in spite of a few minor flaws. Inspired by the success of that sequel, the franchise's creators ― Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza ― decided to do something a little different to continue the saga. Instead of teaming up a third time to create one more sequel, they split up and each directed one of their own. Balagueró would take the fourth movie (the release of which I'm still eagerly anticipating), while Plaza directed the movie we're here to discuss now, [REC] 3: Genesis. Plaza approached the movie in a bold manner, which I'll get into a bit later, but the final product wasn't quite the worthy follow-up that I'd hoped it would have been.

While the first two movies took place in a cramped apartment building, REC 3 instead takes us to a lavish mansion in another part of Barcelona, where young couple Koldo (Diego Martin) and Clara (Leticia Dolera) are having their dream wedding. But their dream quickly becomes a nightmare when Koldo's uncle, unknowingly infected with the same zombie virus we've seen before, turns feral and bites his wife's face off during the reception. One zombie begets a multitude of flesh-eating psychos, and in the mass panic, Koldo and Clara are separated. If the two newlyweds are to be reunited, they'll have to wade through an army of cannibalistic monsters that used to be their friends and family.

I went into [REC] 3 with high hopes. I loved the first two movies and I'd anticipated having a similar reaction to this third one. But I can't say I fell for it like I had its predecessors. It's a decent enough movie that has some cool moments, but there was just something missing. There's something raw and visceral that [REC] 3 is lacking, like the sense of foreboding menace that encompassed the first two movies had been stripped away and replaced with something resembling a touch of self-awareness. It's a less-than-serious movie in a franchise that had so far been deadly serious, which I thought made [REC] 3 more disappointing than anything else.

As I mentioned in the introduction, [REC] 3 was directed by Paco Plaza, the co-director of the first two entries in the franchise. Plaza starts out utilizing the tried-and-true "found footage" style, but jumps into a traditional filmmaking style about twenty minutes in. It's not as jarring a transition as it could have been, and Plaza actually handles it very well. The transition from "found footage" to traditional movie lets Plaza craft scenes far differently than he would have been able to if the movie had continued with that first-person perspective. Not only does he get some nice cinematography that gives the movie a broader feeling, but it also allows Plaza to get a little more creative. Instead of utilizing a ton of jump scares where something leaps into frame and shouts "boo," Plaza will build up suspense by occasionally sitting things in the background and letting them sneak up on the characters.

The bad part, though, is that because the movie is more brightly lit and in a more spacious location than the first two, the movie loses a lot of the claustrophobic atmosphere that was a hallmark of the first two movies. Both of the prior movies afforded the audience precious little breathing room. [REC] 3 can't say that, since it gives us a wider scope of what's going on during its ill-fated wedding.

The movie also feels less serious than we've seen before, nearly venturing into the same territory occupied by more comedic horror movies like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. It's definitely a little more lighthearted than I'd expected when I first started watching the movie. And while Plaza's direction plays a part in that, it's also due to the script written by Plaza and Luis Berdejo. The script is a little too sly for its own good. It tries too hard to wink at the camera, and a couple of the jabs at the whole "found footage" style could have been a bit more subtle. Even some of the characters are a bit too goofy, like a children's entertainer whose costume is repeatedly confused for SpongeBob SquarePants. Yeah, I thought the character was funny every time turned up, but was the comic relief really that necessary?

Plaza and Berdejo also don't do an awful lot to connect the movie to the prior two. There's a few little things that hearken back to what we've seen before, like religious iconography being a formidable weapon against the zombies. But for the most part, [REC] 3 feels like a standalone chapter in the franchise. It makes me wonder just where the movie will go in the grand scheme of things and how (or even if) Jaume Balagueró's [REC] 4 will try connecting it to everything else.

But let's move along to the movie's cast, most of whom are honestly pretty disposable. However, the movie's two leads ― Leticia Dolera and Diego Martín ― are both quite good in their roles. Dolera and Martín are both charming and actually pretty convincing too. They actually make you believe that Dolera hacking her way through a horde of zombies with a chainsaw (all the while screaming about how they ruined her special day) and Martín dressing up in a suit of armor to hunt for his new bride are things that don't seem that farfetched. They are the movie's emotional center, and they jumped into their parts headfirst. Dolera and Martín really make the movie a lot better than it might have been without them.

While I cannot say that I thought [REC] 3 was a bad movie, I was unfortunately disappointed with it. I guess I'd gotten my hopes up way too high. But considering how much I enjoyed the first two movies, how could I not? But despite that disappointment, I still thought it was a fine flick that's worth seeing if you're a fan of the [•REC] movies like I am. And even at its worst, [REC] 3 is still miles ahead of that mediocre direct-to-video sequel that the remake got last year. I'll take "disappointing yet still good" over mediocrity any day. 

Final Rating: ***

Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

I've started noticing a slowly-burgeoning trend in Hollywood where moderately successful movies will get sequels (often in name only) that go direct-to-video. It doesn't even matter if the movies are twenty years old, as Tom Hanks's Bachelor Party and Matthew Broderick's WarGames both got sequels in 2008. But it's usually more recent movies that get the direct-to-video treatment. There's a ton of them, but we're here today to discuss one in particular.

The movie in question is Quarantine 2: Terminal. When the first Quarantine was released in 2008, I was less than impressed with it. It was a mediocre effort from start to finish, and it left me particularly disappointed because I absolutely love [REC], the Spanish movie it was remaking. But I figured I'd give Quarantine 2 a shot anyway. I have to admit that I was curious about it, since I'd heard that it would be going its own way, neither remaking [REC] 2 nor using the "found footage" style that Quarantine and the [REC] movies utilized. So let's check it out and see how it goes.

It all began as a simple night at work for Jenny (Mercedes Masöhn), a flight attendant working on a late-night flight from LAX to Nashville. With only four crew members and a dozen passengers, Jenny isn't expecting any trouble. But trouble is what she gets when one of the passengers becomes stricken with an unidentified illness, puking all over Jenny before going absolutely ballistic. He makes a run for the cockpit, in such a berserk rage that it takes practically everyone on the plane to restrain him.

His violent outbursts are enough to warrant the pilots making an emergency landing in Las Vegas. But when the passengers and crew get off the plane and into the terminal, they're horrified to learn that they've been locked inside due to a military quarantine. The virus that struck the apartment building in Quarantine is now loose among this new group of people, and Jenny and her fellow survivors are forced to deal with the ever-growing number of bloodthirsty infected.

A direct-to-video sequel to a movie that was mediocre to begin with doesn't sound like the most promising of movies. You tend to approach movies like this with a "this is probably gonna suck" mentality. But Quarantine 2 isn't that bad. I can't call it a good movie, but it works. It's the best movie it could have been. And really, that's all you need sometimes.

The movie was written and directed by John Pogue, a screenwriter whose Hollywood career has thus far been unremarkable. Quarantine 2 is his directorial debut, and I can't say I thought he did that bad a job. As I said in the introduction, Pogue made the brave decision to not only avoid remaking [REC] 2 but to scrap the "found footage" style altogether. His inexperience as a director is obvious, as the movie is mostly a by-the-numbers affair. But I did find that he managed to retain Quarantine's atmosphere despite the stylistic change.

Pogue manages to generate some legitimate tension, particularly in the scene where the first infected person tries getting into the plane's cockpit. But he sadly can't maintain that tension all the way to the end. The movie doesn't really have any sort of climax; it peters out until the movie just sort of stops. Part of that is due to the script, which I'll get into in a second. But it's also because Pogue burns himself out too quickly and can't sustain the pace for the entire movie.

At least Pogue's direction is better than his writing. His screenplay actually hurts the movie more than hit helps. Not only does it boast some inexcusable plot holes (how the hell was a character able to get a handgun onto an airplane with his luggage?!), but the characters are underdeveloped as well. They go beyond one-dimensional and become caricatures. There's also the banal dialogue, a plot that's way too similar to the first half of Resident Evil: Degeneration for my taste, and some really dumb moments. Seriously, I didn't understand why almost all of the characters treat Jenny with hostility after the plane lands, as if everything bad that's happening is her fault. Yeah, like some poor stewardess that's as freaked out as everybody else was the cause of all of it.

And like I said before, the climax isn't really all that climactic. Yeah, Pogue could have fixed that from the director's chair. But he should have at least come up with an ending that was more of a bang than a whimper. It makes the movie feel like you were running a race at 90 miles an hour before slowing down and finally crawling a foot from the finish line. It makes me pine for the first Quarantine, where the only real problem with the ending was that they put it on the poster.

I'll give the cast credit for trying to overcome some of the script's deficiencies. Though not all of the actors stand out, there were a few that I thought were worth talking about. Noree Victoria is likable as a friendly Army medic and Josh Cooke is great as the sleazy, manipulative prick du jour. The best among them is Mercedes Masöhn, who I thought was engaging and enjoyable. Unfortunately, I can't say I particularly cared for Mattie Liptak. Not only did his Justin Bieber haircut and wardrobe really rub me the wrong way (a superficial thing to be upset about, I know), but Liptak's performance was really lacking in something that would make me want to watch him.

So how would I go about summarizing exactly how I felt about Quarantine 2? I guess I'd call it a promising movie that needed a slightly better execution. I honestly didn't think it was that bad a movie, just one that needed some improvement. I'll even concede that it made me want to see a third Quarantine movie. But in retrospect, maybe they should have just remade [REC] 2 instead. That could have been sweet.

Final Rating: **½

[REC] 2 (2009)

I've never been one to keep my affection for horror movies a secret. But the problem is that there aren't a lot of American horror movies being released lately that really catch my eye. I mean, I really didn't have any interest in movies like The Unborn or Orphan, or in cheesy-looking remakes like The Stepfather, Sorority Row, and Prom Night. And even when I do get interested in something, it usually ends up being disappointing.

Because of that, I'll occasionally look to international horror. These hunts have actually been fairly successful, especially when they lead me to movies like [REC]. This little gem from Spain absolutely scared the pants off me when I first saw it a few years ago, and I'll actually go as far as to call it one of the best horror movies I've seen in the new millennium.

An entertaining take on both zombies and the "found footage" style, [REC] was brought to the United States and remade as Quarantine in 2008. Something must have been lost in translation, though, because Quarantine was just a complete mess. However, a proper follow-up to the original movie came out last year in the form of a sequel written and directed by [REC]'s creators. And as a fan of the original, I can say that I felt [REC] 2 is a worthy successor.

Mere moments after the conclusion of the first movie, a police tactical unit escorts Dr. Owen (Jonathan Mellor), an official from Spain's Ministry of Health, into the same quarantined building we saw before to investigate the infection. They're almost immediately attacked by zombies, and one of the SWAT team members is infected. When Dr. Owen manages to repel him with a rosary and religious commands, the team realizes there's more to it than he's letting on.

The truth is he's actually a priest sent by the Vatican to find the virus's "patient zero." A fellow priest had been researching what he believed to be the biological cause for demonic possession, which he'd found in a young girl. He kidnapped her and took her to the building's penthouse to conduct his research, but the virus eventually mutated and became incredibly contagious and fast-acting. Now faced with the risk of this virus spreading, Dr. Owen must obtain a blood sample from the girl in order to develop an antidote. But with the building crawling with bloodthirsty zombies, accomplishing that will be easier said than done.

I absolutely loved [REC]. I thought it was scary as hell and showed how the "found footage" technique can be used effectively. While Quarantine was a real letdown, I still patiently awaited [REC] 2. And unlike Quarantine, the sequel was everything I'd hoped for in a follow-up to [REC]. So let's dive in and see just what made it so good.

Returning to the scene of the crime are Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, who once again knock it out of the park. They bring back the "found footage" technique from the first [REC], but have a little fun with it thanks to the use of multiple cameras. Each member of the police team wears a small camera on his helmet, three teenagers sneak into the building with a camera of their own, and a thought-dead character from the first movie returns with that movie's camera. It gets a bit ridiculous after a while, but on the whole, I thought it was cool.

They put the handheld camera style to good use again, letting scares sneak up on us and playing with our expectations by starting to repeat scares from the original, only to take them in a different direction. They also go to great lengths to give the fans what they want while trying something new. And by something new, I mean more action. Basically, [REC] 2 is to [REC] what James Cameron's Aliens was to Ridley Scott's Alien; a lot of the same with a lot more exciting action. And thanks to the first-person POV aspect, [REC] 2 is nearly a better Doom movie than the actual Doom movie.

And as for the screenplay... who needs a screenplay? Written by Balagueró, Plaza, and Manu Díez, the script is a little bit on the shallow side. The characters are one-dimensional (I don't even remember their names, outside of Owen), and the plot is threadbare. I mean, half of my synopsis is just an explanation of what the virus is. It could have been only one paragraph if I'd wanted it to be. But [REC] 2 is not about characters or story. It's about mayhem and being scary. So any shortcomings the script may have are forgivable.

Last on my list are the actors, who are mostly disposable. When the characters are anonymous cannon fodder, you tend not to expect anything from the actors playing them. But believe it or not, there are a handful of good performances. The best comes from Jonathan Mellor, who plays his role with intensity and conviction. I also liked Óscar Zafra and Ariel Casas as members of the police team. The only really bad performances, though, come from the teenagers who sneak into the building. Playing them are Andrea Ros, Pau Poch, and Ãlex Batllou, and every second they're on the screen, they're nothing short of annoying. They're frustratingly bad every second they're on the screen, especially Ros, whose character seems to do nothing but whine and complain. The characters are accompanied by a firefighter played by Ferran Terraza, and Terraza's good performance is ultimately dragged down by Ros, Poch, and Batllou. 

[REC] 2 isn't as scary as the first one. I have to admit that. But it's still pretty awesome. You don't see too many sequels that are on the level of their predecessors, but [REC] 2 is one of them. It's 85 minutes of nonstop action, scares, and entertainment that is one hell of a fun ride. Balagueró and Plaza are supposedly working on two more [REC] sequels, so let's hope those are just as good. 

Final Rating: ****

Quarantine (2008)

Ever since the success of The Ring, it's become commonplace for popular foreign-language horror movies to be remade in English for quicker consumption by American audiences. Most of them end up being remakes of East Asian horror, as by my count, there have been nine remakes of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai horror movies between 2002 and today. And that's not counting sequels or non-horror Asian remakes like The Departed, Shall We Dance?, and The Lake House.

But eventually, Hollywood was bound to remake a horror movie that wasn't Asian. Enter [REC], a Spanish zombie movie that scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it. It apparently made an impression on someone in Hollywood, because the remake rights were sold even before it opened in Spain. Carrying the new title Quarantine, the remake came to American theaters only one year after the release of its source material. And while I absolutely loved [REC], Quarantine just left me feeling like I had a wicked case of déjà vu.

As the movie begins, we're introduced to Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter), the host of a television show focusing on the various social services that operate during the late-night hours. On this particular episode, Angela and her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) are shadowing a team of Los Angeles firefighters during their nightly routine. Though much of the evening is comprised of rather mundane occurrences, things start picking up once the fire department gets called to help the police deal with a screaming elderly woman who has locked herself inside her apartment.

But when they break down the door, the woman goes absolutely berserk and violently attacks one of the responding policemen, nearly tearing his face off in no time flat. As they drag the injured cop back to the lobby, everyone is shocked to discover that the health department has quarantined the building as part of a biochemical hazard protocol. But while the quarantine causes everyone stranded inside the building to become irritable and paranoid, it has trapped them with something far worse than their own fears. A virus — resembling a super-advanced form of rabies — has somehow gotten loose inside the building, turning those it infects into enraged, bloodthirsty zombies.

I absolutely loved [REC], so when Quarantine was released, I was curious to see how it would handle the source material. And as it turns out, Quarantine was almost identical to [REC]. Sure, Quarantine is about fifteen minutes longer than [REC], but outside of that, they're practically the same movie. I mean, it isn't quite a complete shot-for-shot copy like Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho. But the majority of Quarantine plays out exactly the same as the original movie. That made it hard for me to really get into Quarantine, because I felt like I was watching the same movie as before, only in English and with different actors.

It's not that the remake is a particularly bad movie or anything, but its delivery is different. It's all about the delivery. For example, someone tells you a hilarious joke. Someone else tells you the same joke later, only it's not as funny then, due to how the second person told it. That's the difference between [REC] and Quarantine; they're both doing the same thing, only one is doing it better.

At the helm is John Erick Dowdle, who does as good a job as he can in replicating [∙REC]. He doesn't quite match the visceral atmosphere of the original, though, partly because of how artificial Quarantine feels. In [REC], things felt more natural because the guy playing the cameraman actually was the guy running the camera. Quarantine doesn't have that, sadly. The whole movie forced, like Dowdle was trying so hard to copy [REC] that he never thought to try doing his own thing. He could have figured that you can't fix what isn't broken, but there's nothing wrong with trying to shake things up a little.

The same can be said for the script, written by Dowdle and his brother Drew. Outside of a tiny handful of exceptions, the script pretty much duplicates [REC] as well. There's some padding to make Quarantine longer than [REC]‘s 75-minute running time, and a few things are changed for American audiences. But as with the direction, the writing is pretty much identical to its source material. You're pretty much getting the same movie, ending and all. But as I said, something must have been lost in translation, because it simply doesn't feel the same. I guess I can't really fault the Dowdles for not trying to fix what isn't broken. But they don't really contribute anything to make their version stand out, either. That's really sad, too, because they had the chance to write a really scary movie. And instead, they just gave us something that's just okay at best.

All that's left to talk about is the acting, which I thought was a mixed bag to say the least. Like [REC], Quarantine is the type of ensemble effort in which many of the ancillary characters blend into the background. It may be harder than usual to break this down into specifics, but I guess I'll try to wing it. In the lead role is Jennifer Carpenter, who I absolutely loved in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Unfortunately, her performance here is a disappointment. Carpenter begins the movie with a rather bubbly demeanor, and is actually pretty likable. But as the movie progresses, her character becomes more and more hysterical. It reaches the point that you almost want the zombies to get her and shut her up. While I'd assume that most people would probably act the same way if stuck in a similar situation, that doesn't make Carpenter any less annoying.

But on the other hand, we do get a strong performance from Jay Hernandez. Hernandez plays his character as someone trying to stay calm and level-headed even though he wants to panic, which I felt was a really good way to approach it. He's quite good in the role, and I can't complain. There are also some acceptable performances from Greg Germann, Jonathon Schaech, and Rade Sherbedgia, but outside of Carpenter and Hernandez, none of the performances are really all that memorable. But then again, most of the actors don't really do anything to make an impression. Some of them are just kinda there, and others overact to the point of being silly. Maybe that was the problem with Quarantine all along.

I know I've had a few complaints about Quarantine, but my biggest one is in regards to how the movie as promoted during its theatrical run. Believe it or not, but they actually gave away the ending of the movie. The trailers, the TV commercials, and even the poster feature the last shot of the movie. It's not as bad as when the plot twist in the remake of When A Stranger Calls was spoiled in its advertising, because you wouldn't know that was the ending of Quarantine unless you'd seen already seen [REC]. (Or unless I spoiled it for you just now. Oops.) But still, it seems like a really rotten thing for an advertising campaign to do.

I've been writing this review with the belief that Quarantine was less a remake of [REC] and more of a lame carbon copy of it. And I think that belief is true. But when viewed on its own merits, Quarantine is a thoroughly mediocre movie. It doesn't have the same sense of dread that enveloped [REC], and the scares aren't as scary. The movie doesn't outright suck, but it could have been much better. If they really had to do an American version of [REC], they could have just recorded an English dub of the original movie, They did it for High Tension, so why not for [REC]? But now we're stuck with just a mediocre remake of a great movie, and that's just sad. Quarantine is at least adequate, but there was plenty of room for improvement.

Final Rating: ***

[REC] (2007)

In a number of my reviews, I've spoken of my belief that some of the best horror movies of the last ten or fifteen years has come from outside the United States. Though I first started saying that in regards to Asian flicks like Ringu, Ju-on, and Audition, we've seen awesome movies coming from elsewhere. Australia and Canada have put their own two cents in, but quite a few significant contributions have come from Europe. Countries like France, Sweden, and England have made some fine additions to the genre with High Tension, Let the Right One In, and Shaun of the Dead.

Spain even got in on the act when they gave us the movie we're here to discuss at the moment, [REC]. While zombie movies are a dime a dozen, [REC] dared to be different by using a "found footage" style that made it look like a zombie version of The Blair Witch Project. And although the movie was one of a deluge of movies with the same style released around the same time, [REC] is incredibly effective. And quite frankly, it's one of the scariest movies I've seen in a long while.

As the movie begins, we're introduced to Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco), the host of a television show focusing on the various social services that operate during the late-night hours. On this particular episode, Angela and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) are shadowing a team of Barcelona firefighters during their nightly routine. Though much of the evening is comprised of rather mundane occurrences, things start picking up once the fire department gets called to help the police deal with a screaming elderly woman who has locked herself inside her apartment.

But when they break down the door, the woman goes absolutely insane and violently attacks one of the responding policemen, nearly tearing his face off in no time flat. As they drag the injured cop back to the lobby, everyone is shocked to discover that the health department has quarantined the building as part of a biochemical hazard protocol. But while the quarantine causes everyone stranded inside to become irritable and paranoid, it has trapped them with something far worse than their own fears. A mysterious virus has somehow gotten loose inside the building, turning those it infects into enraged, bloodthirsty zombies.

[REC] is most assuredly one of the most effective horror movies I've ever had the chance to see. Everything about it from, start to finish, works. I have to admit that I wasn't sure what to expect going into the movie. I was afraid that it was going to be some silly Blair Witch wannabe in spite of the positive word of mouth I'd heard prior to watching it for the first time. But when I finally did see it, I was blown away. It was a really good movie. And this might sound like simple hyperbole, but [REC] absolutely scared the pants off me. It's not too often I can say that either, but it's true. [REC] had me jumping out of my seat with every scare, moments that come fast and furious throughout the movie. But just what about it makes it so good, hmm?

Let's start like my reviews typically do, with the direction. The movie is helmed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, a pair of individual horror directors who've teamed up for this particular flick. Using the "found footage" format is something that most people can either like or hate, but I found that it was something that worked in [REC]'s favor. With the movie shot from a first-person perspective, it allows things to sneak up on you and ultimately be scarier. None of the scares seem cheap or forced, and with cinematographer Pablo Rosso actually playing the cameraman within the movie, everything seems more natural.

That natural feeling is helped by the absence of a musical score. Music is good in setting the mood for other movies, but [REC]'s lack of it means that Balagueró and Plaza must try harder to set the tone with sound design. And if you ask me, I think they succeeded. Let's also not overlook the fact that Balagueró and Plaza pared the movie down to a sleek 75-minute running time, making [REC] a much more intense experience. The short running time affords precious little room to breathe once the ball really starts rolling. It allows Balagueró and Plaza to crank out scare after scare after scare, as if it were a cinematic roller coaster.

As the movie is based more on visual scares than psychological ones, you'd think that the script might suffer because of it. And to tell you the truth, the script — written by Balagueró, Plaza, and Luis Burdejo — is probably just a secondary element in the grand scheme of things. But aside from a few flaws here and there (such as a scene where the virus's origins are conveniently explained all at once), the script is relatively solid.

The characters are a little one-dimensional at times, but for the most part, they're good enough to pull you into the movie and make you worry about what will happen to them by the end of the movie. The only bad part of the whole thing is that the concept seems like they've just taken the zombies from 28 Days Later and stuck them into an apartment building. But even that's not totally bad, since putting a bunch of frightened, erratic characters in a small place with some rabid zombies, and you've got 75 minutes of entertaining chaos.

Last but not least is the ensemble cast, who all do fine jobs. They're all quite good, but since a lot of them are in roles so minor they practically blend into the background (while still retaining a particular distinctiveness), I'm just going to touch on some of the highlights. My favorite performance came from Manuela Velasco, who I thought was very charming in her role. She plays the character as inquisitive almost to the point of being pushy about it, and while the character is practically reduced to only running and screaming by the end of the movie, Velasco manages to maintain the viewer's attention and sympathy for the entire flick. Her character is perhaps the most crucial one of the movie, and she hits all the right notes.

I also thought that Jorge Serrano and Carlos Lasarte were great as a panicky police officer and a vain building resident respectively, and Ferran Terran played his part as one of the firefighters very well. It's hard to really pick any major standouts, though, because everyone gels together so well. So on the whole, the cast is fantastic.

If you're anything like me, then you'll find that [REC] will stick in your head for a few days after you see it for the first time. It's one of the few horror movies that really scared me at the level it did. It actually made me a little paranoid at first. I watched the movie for the first time in the dark in the middle of the night, and I kept thinking I heard something coming up behind me. [REC] almost made me scared of my own shadow, something most horror movies don't do nowadays. That's how effective it is, and it's definitely a movie worth seeing if you're a horror fan. 

Final Rating: ****