Mini Review - '[Rec]'

And now for something none Oscary.

This Spanish language scare fest made me scream like a little girl. My partner tried to play it down to a more manly scream, but no. He too defied his age and gender.
The film follows a Spanish late-night television reporter, Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco is fantastic form), through the lens of her cameraman, Pablo.
They are reporting for a TV show called 'While You Were Sleeping' about the happenings in a local fire station in Barcelona.
Nothing much happens (flirting, basketball) until a call where the duo follow a team of firefighters who get a call from an apartment building nearby about a trapped elderly woman.
When they arrive, they find the apartment's residents huddled in the lobby all complaining about what is going on. Apparently this woman was screaming loudly and she fell.
They go upstairs to find a woman who is obviously distressed.

Then for the next hour or so I watched (through my fingers) as hysteria breaks out. There is no real build up with this movie, so sense of dread. Unlike so many other of these docu style horrors you get no real back story of the characters to interfere in the there and now. And this makes them all the more human and much easier to root for.
This film kept me up at night.
I for on like the shaky camera work here. I find a brief shaky glimpse of something scary all the more terrifying than a full on face shot...it amps up the imagination (as well as hiding any make up mistakes).
[Rec] works, where so many other have failed, because it plays like a survival film. Nothing is overly explained, the people are all realistically flawed and best of all, it all seems plausible.

Grade: B+