There is a building in the middle of the city where something strange has occured tonight, leading it to be closed off from the rest of the public by the authorities, who will say nothing more than there has been a disease outbreak inside and nobody should approach. Somebody who is approaching are the SWAT team sent to investigate, and they are filming their excursion on a video camera, assisted by the minicameras mounted on their helmets. Once they get there a Dr Owen (Jonathan D. Mellor) is waiting for them...
And he, like this outbreak, is not what he seems, but you knew that if you had seen the first REC film from a couple of years before this was released to some acclaim. That in spite of it employing two pretty hackneyed styles of horror, both of which had been done to death by this stage not that this stopped the world's moviemakers, low budget and blockbuster alike, from capitalising on them, wringing every last drop of cash out of the public whose appetite for them had not yet abated. You know what this means, of course: it was the mix of found footage and zombie movie which attracted the hordes.
Hordes of punters, that was, making a sequel to REC an inevitability, but to be fair that original, if you could use that word, was not bad at all. Once this instalment began it looked to be business as usual, more of the same and whatnot, only the further it progressed it became clear the filmmakers had introduced another well worn development into their story. They had evidently decided zombies and more of them wouldn't cut the mustard, so added in the demonic possession straight from The Exorcist. Therefore once the SWAT team get inside the building Dr Owen reluctantly reveals what he's actually there for.
And it's not to shoot the undead in the noggin, although there is a strong element of that. Nope, he wants a test tube of blood taken from the equivalent of patient zero, the girl who was possessed first and was experimented on by the authorities, which led to the danger erupting in the first place. If you think, what a cliché, typical Spaniards couldn't get through their chiller without mentioning religion, then there's an aspect of falling back on the familiar, but rest assured directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza were more interested in delivering the shocks and tension, often both at the same time, so you could simply roll with the angle they had found rather than resisting it.
That's not to say it didn't introduce a problem or two, as once established in the original that it was a disease they were dealing with, the Satanic element did render proceedings rather bent out of shape in comparison to your average zombie chase fest. Fortunately, the filmmakers managed to design not just a new set of threats for the characters (one major person returning from the initial entry, though to say more would be to spoil it), but a fresh structure as not one but two sets of people filming their adventures on video cameras were present. Thus we had a three act affair where the SWAT team were followed for the first, a group of teenagers who get nosey and break into the apartment building for the second, and what was left of those two teaming up for the third. It was true that with a last shot owing much to The Hidden, REC 2 got a bit silly, but all credit to them for innovating something to continue the franchise, even if by this time we knew too much.
Spanish director who made a variety of short films before debuting in 2002 with the horror thriller Second Name. Followed with the period werewolf flick Romasanta, produced by Brian Yuzna. He subsequently teamed up with another Spaniard, Jaume Balaguero, for the successful REC series.
