During last year's attempt at the October Horror Movie Challenge, I reviewed the Spanish-language found-footage [rec], which I personally think was pretty bloody good. So it makes sense to review the first sequel in that series, [rec]2, this year.
We start off exactly where the last film ended, with reporter Angela Vidal being dragged off into the darkness by... something. We then meet some of our new characters for this movie - a four-man SWAT team and a doctor, Owen, from the Ministry of Health. They're being sent into the quarantined apartment building to find out what's happening in there, since they lost contact with the last team who went in 70 minutes ago/in the last movie. The building seems deserted, but things soon go all pear-shaped when one of the SWAT team is attacked by an infected resident and turned. Dr. Owen then makes some startling revelations - the people in the building aren't infected with a normal rabies-zombie virus, but one that stems from demonic possession. Furthermore he isn't actually with the Ministry of Health, but is actually an agent of the Church, sent in to try to contain things and find a cure. Meanwhile... at roughly the same time things are going on inside, three teenagers decide to follow two men they see breaking the quarantine and entering the building from the sewers because they think it will get them some good footage, thus making things even worse for everyone involved...
...Okay, [rec]2, I'm willing to see where you're going with this. Demonic possession as the origin for a rabies-like zombie virus certainly isn't common in zombie cinema, and with all the bitching and complaining I do about horror movies not being willing to try anything new it would be severely remiss of me not to give it at least some kudos here. It's just... it's a bit out of left field, isn't it? And you have to question just how far ahead the demon possessing young Tristana (and there's a name that made my gamer brain do a double-take) Medeiros planned ahead for this, or if all of these events were just a load of bad luck and coincidence? (Apparently, it was the latter, which doesn't exactly make the demon seem too smart) But still, it is an interesting idea and the film does do its very best to keep things new without becoming too silly.
The Plot Contrivance Fairy certainly took the time to visit the set of [rec]2 though, particularly when it came to the various cameras used to film all the action. Every single time the camera the main characters have been using runs out of battery power, or breaks after being used to beat someone to a bloody pulp, another one is miraculously brought to the survivors. The final camera is, of course, the most important one as well, as it is the one with the magical night vision mode that allows is to see Tristana Medeiros (who is played by Javier Botet, who also played the Leper in IT and Mama in Mama), and all her home improvements (I'm not going to think too hard about that aspect). But at least the film has again made an effort to come up with good reasons for the characters to keep filming throughout the life-threatening chaos and for the existence of night vision mode full stop.
As you might have figured out by now, [rec]2 is also a found-footage movie, and so if you're prone to motion sickness from watching the screen flailing around wildly while characters run around screaming, then this film might not be your cup of tea. Something else that the filmmakers added with the camera was the idea of having a gun barrel at the bottom of the screen during some first-person scenes, so there are several scenes that are effectively FPS-esque in the movie. Some people may enjoy that; personally I found it unnecessary - I was unnerved enough in the scenes where they were looking back and forth along long empty hallways or up and down the stairwell when we, the audience, have the dramatic irony of knowing the building shouldn't be this deserted and I didn't need a gun visible at the bottom of the frame to make it more tense.
In the end, [rec]2 is a good movie. It's more of the same stuff that made [rec] so pants-wettingly tense, but with enough new ideas to turn things on their head and make the audience stop short and think for a moment - all the better for then throwing a screaming, bloody infected in their face straight after. Some of the characters were a little too annoying for their own good - the teens in particular - and one character gets the Scatman Crothers Special, but for the most part everyone acts in ways that make sense and there's enough good stuff in the plot to make you decide to just go along with it all.
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