Product Description

A team of local TV reporters are following a squad of firemen on night duty. The footage is completely live and their task is to make show about on the life of these professionals who work while we are sleeping. The first job of the night is to rescue an old lady who is trapped inside her apartment but the routine rescue soon takes a sinister turn. Something evil is spreading throughout the building, out of control. Trapped inside, the firemen and the TV crew have to confront an unknown and lethal horror. Now, the only thing that matters is hiding, surviving and trying desperately to escape. They must keep on recording. No matter what happens. Until the very last moment. Extras: Making of REC Interview with Cast & Crew Extended Scenes Deleted Scenes Behind The Scenes The Castings The Secret Archives

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8804 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-08-11
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 75 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Rec starts with a good, solid, straightforward idea. Its plan? To focus us on TV reporters, who are following a group of firemen as they go about their shift. Said shift, however, doesn’t quite go to plan, as what starts as a seemingly standard rescue mission soon takes a disturbing, chilling turn, and this sets the scene for a very effective horror film.

One of the reasons why Rec works so well is the manner in which it’s shot. It’s not the first film to adopt the handheld shooting style, and indeed there have been many clichéd attempts to follow the success of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. Yet the style suits Rec well, with the photography less a gimmick, and more a legitimate storytelling device.

It’s fair to say that Rec is a dish best served cold, so it’d be unfair to expand on the plot. However, be in no doubt that the mix of psychological creepiness and outright horror is very good, making the most of the claustrophobic surroundings, and wisely sidestepping many of the pitfalls of the genre. It has one or two problems, but it’s hard to quibble too much when the main feature works as well as this low-key, yet ultra-effective film does. --Jon Foster

Synopsis
High-concept Spanish horror film REC employs the same 'amateur' handheld camera technique as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and, more recently, CLOVERFIELD, to create a heightened sense of realism and terror. Local TV reporter Angela (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman are covering the night shift at a Barcelona fire station when they are called out to help an old woman trapped in her apartment. This routine call is soon revealed to be anything but, when events take a horrific turn. After breaking down the door, the team find the woman seemingly possessed and rabidly aggressive. As it becomes clear that the danger is not merely confined to the woman's apartment, Angela, her cameraman and those unfortunate to be trapped inside the dark building find themselves desperately scrambling to escape, despite outside efforts to contain them.
The film is co-directed by Jaume Balaguero (DARKNESS) and Paco Plaza, who also share writing credits with Luis Berdejo. The hyper-realism of the teams' script and frenzied direction ensure that the viewer is on edge throughout, with dread lurking down every hallway and around every corner. A huge cult hit in its native country, REC has already spawned an American remake, QUARANTINE (2008) and received much-deserved widespread critical acclaim.

Customer Reviews

Just keep recording......
This one's a bit of a curate's egg for me to be honest.

I've been searching for a really scary horror film that creeps me out the same way classic Asian horror films and "Blair Witch" did. I've been true-fright-free now for a couple of years and the current celluloid trend for questionable torture-porn/gore-no is something I deliberately choose to avoid.
Anyway, after several recommendations I arrived at "Rec"

Yes, admittedly the PoV thing is generally overdone. Personally I can never see any reason for a character continuing to film in situations of fear and terror and as we see more films using this technique the more tenuous it becomes as a device. Surely it would be the last thing on your mind but finally here we have a film where the continuation of filming is 90% believable. "Rec" starts as a documentary until things start to go downhill. The inclusion of real TV presenter Manuela Velasco as the main character (Angela) is clever but obviously means little to those of us who don't watch Spanish television.
As events take a turn for the worse, Angela's insistent demands (for the unseen Pablo) to "keep filming" are reason enough to keep the PoV going. Later on several static, accidental and incidental shots reinforce this illusion effectively and later still the camera becomes a tool rather than just our surrogate eye.

So having effectively conquered the "keep filming" issue Rec is free to indulge itself and to crank up the tension. Sadly (for me) after an intial peak I found the survival horror element slightly less than original and in danger of becoming "same old, same old". I actually caught myself thinking "oh no..not xxxxxxx again".
It's probably all my fault for being too old and having seen far too many films of this genre already.
At one point the film became a hybrid of that genre and the brilliant "Right At Your Door" and I was immersed again until the inevitable "ten little indians" structure restablished itself and proceeded to whittle down the remaining cast members.

Now..... having said all this I must add...it's carried off with style, great ensemble (re)acting from an almost unknown cast and more importantly all done at a cracking pace. This pace is the film's trump card as far as I'm concerned. Yes I did experience deja-vu but the speed of events catapaults you past all this, without pause for breath, into the brilliant last 15-20 minutes where......

......finally the film began to properly scare me.
Growing trepidation, piecing together of plot elements and discovered clues you realize the horrid truth of the situation and then all of a sudden you catch a glimpse of....................well that would be telling.

The final section saved the film for me and is the major reason for four stars. Yet again proof that thinking for yourself and not-seeing is much better than the reliance upon blood and gore of the film's middle section.

So as I said earlier, a curate's egg.... good in parts...........and actually very, very good in some of them.

great
I heard about this after the American version was made this year so i bought it knowing it was in subtitles/spanish film. I was very impressed for many reasons especially the tense atmosphere and great camera work. The ending is brilliant and i would definately recommend it to all horror fans. Not far off a 5 star at all.

The previous review is an understatement
Calling [rec] the best horror film of the year is a huge understatement: It is the best horror movie I have ever seen, and that's a statement I don't make lightly. Absolutely stunning, completely terrifying and flawless in terms of writing, directing, acting, pacing, visual style, cinematography, ...

I'm sitting here, having just watched it, and experiencing something I've not felt since the first time I saw Robert Wise's original "The Haunting" and the "Bobby" segment of the 1970s portmanteau horror, "Dead of Night"

My heart is racing and my head is cotton wool-wrapped from the sheer exhilaration of watching a pretty much perfect horror movie which manages to touch every base, from psychological to gore, without at any time feeling forced or...

I'm just stunned that horror movies can be THIS good.