[Rec] 2 - Review

Review by Dustin’s Review

This is how you make a sequel. Instead of just being a tacked-on continuation or brazen cash-grab, “[REC] 2″ builds upon the mythos set up in 2007′s “[REC],” then twists it in rousingly unanticipated ways as the characters—and viewers—learn more about what they are dealing with. Returning to the directors’ chairs, Jaume Belaguero and Paco Plaza find logical ways to also retain the POV style of the original. This “you-are-there” feel, aided by superb actors who never seem as if they are acting, creates a strong sense of disquiet and foreboding. Anything could be lurking around the corner or at the edges of the frame, and half the fun is in the diverting of this anxious anticipation just as the real scares prepare to pounce when you least expect them to.

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Review by Horror

Taking place just 13 minutes after the first REC movie concluded, REC2 hits the ground running and never lets up for even a second. It was so exhilarating, intense, and downright gory, I can even forgive the ensuing shaky-cam coma. (Honestly, I was downing headache and motion-sickness meds hand over fist after this flick! But it’s still better than first one, which I could not entirely stomach.) Now please forgive me for the spoilers about to come.
If you remember the ending of the first REC, on-camera reporter Angela was dragged away by the virus-riddled Patient Zero into a pit of darkness. We don’t see her right away when REC2 opens up, but she makes an appearance later on. Returning writer-director team Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza turn the tagline “One witness, one camera” on its head and this time follow a variety of witnesses and their different camera feeds. Much as I don’t like shaky-cam, I’ve got to hand it to DP Pablo Rosso for making it look so real while at the same time remembering this is a film and the drama and suspense need to be seen.

As the story unfolds, we quickly learn that the policemen, firemen and the unsuspecting TV crew that went inside the now tented and quarantined building were lost and a small SWAT team is dispatched to handle the situation.

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Review by Little White Lies

Everyone’s a critic nowadays – and when it comes to this super-speedy sequel, which judders with kinetic, shaky-cam scares and what-the-fuck? narrative about-turns, they’re all going to have the proverbial field day. Perhaps they should.

Here’s what they’re going to write. It’s a computer game movie clicking like a hyperactive teenager between POV footage shot by the SWAT team investigating the original film’s quarantined Barcelona apartment block. They’ll reel off the antecedents (The Exorcist, The Descent, Demons, Friday The 13th Part IX) like anything’s 100 per cent pure anymore. They’ll pick apart minor plot joins while ignoring the beauty of the structure as a whole, and they’ll give away all the good bits for nothing. That is, after all, what those critics paid to get in.

But out in the real world [Rec] 2 might be the audience flick of 2010. For here is an ambitious, technically phenomenal and almost farcically tense sequel that lands nearly every leap of faith it excitingly attempts. As Dr Owen (Jonathan Mellor) and his gung-ho gun team sweep the stricken building, weapons out, panicky breathing hammering the speakers, the doomy (some might say Doom-y) atmosphere does indeed feel like a first-person shoot-’em-up.

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