[REC] continues in the recent horror trend of found video footage (started by The Blair Witch Project I think). In this scenario, the story begins innocuously when a soft-news tv reporter follows some firefighters overnight. The reporter, Angela, hopes to get some exciting footage although the firemen tell her most days it is just waiting around. A call does come in though, a report of an elderly woman who locked herself in her apartment, and Angela and her cameraman Pablo excitedly ride along.
When they arrive at the small apartment building, most of the inhabitants are gathered in the foyer with a couple policemen. Things are a bit confusing but they go up to the woman’s apartment, she is a bit incoherent and they approach her carefully, but suddenly she goes berserk and fiercely bites one of the men. As everyone tries to make sense of what has just happened, they discover that the building is in lockdown, with policemen on the outside telling them to stay indoors, that some sort of contagion is loose in the building.
As the film continues, it comes out that a sick dog may have been Patient Zero, spreading a rabies-like virus that is causing the havoc inside the building. Meanwhile, Angela naturally has Pablo continue filming the story, giving on camera commentary when she can. It turns into mayhem and she and Pablo become less of journalists and more of victims like the others, as they accuse each other, hide secrets, and try to get as much info as possible from the people outside. We see, through their camera, as a health technician is sent in to tend to the injured victims, but that he really has something to hide. One by one, they are picked off, and as they get infected, they become killers.
At the beginning, the character of Angela is an annoyance of a journalist, hovering where she shouldn’t be in order to get her story. This was so as well in the remake, Quarantine, except the U.S. actor continued to be so throughout the story and was less of a sympathetic character. The two stories also diverge a little at the end, as the Spanish Angela discovers the trouble has something to do with a girl suspected to be possessed by demons, whereas the U.S. Angela’s discovery continues to be about a rabies-like virus.
The Spanish actors, none of whom I knew, also give more credence and realism to the inhabitants of the building, and the building itself (I read somewhere it is a real building and not a set made for the movie) gives the movie character, a little shabby but still with architectural personality and hidden spaces where evil can hide. The camera work is very nausea-inducing shaky though, and sometimes the filmmakers/Pablo don’t show much which lends to the mystery and chills. Horror thrills build up with gore, suspense, questions answered and unanswered, as Angela and the others discover the secret of the building's penthouse. By movie’s end, there seems to be no end to the horror and yet there is.
Overall, many of the characters have their bit of story relating to the plot as a whole, whether it’s a mother with a sick child who is accused of being Patient Zero, or an elderly man left behind in his apartment, unmentioned until the movie is well underway, or even the emergency personnel who are not emotionally attached to the people in the building but are forced to be in authority positions for something they have been kept in the dark about.
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