SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (14)
By:
November 17, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite horror movies. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
[•REC] | d. JAUME BALAGUERÓ, PACO PLAZA | 2007
Let’s talk about a horror film that immediately became a (contemporary) classic, was shot on a low budget, and was made in Spain. [•REC] was the last movie that R-E-A-L-L-Y scared me. I didn’t go to the cinema in 2007 to see it —probably due to the prejudice I have around movies that become very popular the minute they’re released — but instead watched it at home years later. I could not breathe during most of the picture, and grabbed the sofa cushions in a way that I hadn’t in years.
[•REC] opens with a young TV reporter, Ángela Vidal — the role of Manuela Velasco’s life — whose bottom-of-the-rung job is hosting Mientras usted duerme (While You’re Sleeping), a show that profiles graveyard-shift workers. This particular episode sees her at a firehouse, where unfortunately not much is happening… until they get a call. There’s a disturbance in a Barcelona apartment building, possibly due to an infection — which is a hint of the type of creatures that will appear later. It turns into the kind of horror that is utterly terrifying to me, whether in cinema or literature: that which is more about suggestion than showing or telling.
Ángela is curious, and she wants to climb the journalism ladder; her command “¡Sigue grabando!” (“Keep recording!”) to a cameraman we hardly see shows her commitment to the story (as well as his). They’re not giving up, regardless of what happens inside that building. And so this faux “investigative” program actually becomes news. This real-time effect of the narrative and its perspective (the omniscient lens of the camera that keeps recording — thus the movie’s title) contribute to our sense that anyone could wind up in such a situation… one where the discomfort increases gradually. The recurring white noise, screaming, and the images that are suddenly blurred or interrupted make things worse and worse. Your imagination fills in the rest, as a familiar and recognizable environment becomes unfamiliar and terrifying.
If you enjoy horror that goes beyond the strict rules of the genre, this a good movie to give you the creeps. Just start saving for new sofa cushions.
Bonus track: There is a comic with the “missing bits” of the picture, and a 2022 documentary about the experience of filming this movie: [•REC], Terror sin Pausa.
SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Crockett Doob on THE SHINING | Dean Haspiel on TOURIST TRAP | Fran Pado on M3GAN | Erin M. Routson on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT | Adam McGovern on THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER | Michele Carlo on THE EXORCIST | Tony Pacitti on JAWS | Josh Glenn on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) | Kathy Biehl on HALLOWEEN | Annie Nocenti on ROSEMARY’S BABY | Carolyn Campbell on WAIT UNTIL DARK | Marc Weidenbaum on DAWN OF THE DEAD | Amy Keyishian on SHAUN OF THE DEAD | Gabriela Pedranti on [•REC] | Mariane Cara on PARANORMAL ACTIVITY | Trav SD on FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY | Colin Campbell on EVIL DEAD (2013) | Lynn Peril on NIGHT GALLERY | Heather Quinlan on THE CHANGELING | Kenny Simek on REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on IT (1990) | James Scott Maloy on CONTAGION | Nick Rumaczyk on THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF | Max Alvarez on THE INNOCENTS | Michael Campochiaro on BLACK CHRISTMAS.
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