[REC]

[REC] follows a young TV reporter and her cameraman who cover the night shift at the local fire station. Receiving a call from an old lady trapped in her house, they reach her building to hear horrifying screams — which begin a long nightmare and a uniquely dramatic TV report.

[REC]‘s origin came from Balagueró and Plaza’s need to make a “cheap” movie, free of commercial ties, in which they could experiment. This starting point, soon to become the slogan of the film (“Experience the fear”), was simple: to explore the mechanisms of horror, what scares people and how this fear can be represented on the screen.

To this end, Balagueró and Plaza mixed the aesthetics of the reality show with those of The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) or Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) and a clever review of the zombie archetype based in the “infected” of 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002). The argument may not be new, but, as in any horror film, what matters is not what is told but how you tell it. In [REC], the language of TV’s reality show genre is explored. The entire film is shot digitally and has a unique perspective: that of the cameraman who records the whole terrifying descent (or rise, as will be seen at the end of film) into hell. As Xavier Perez said, “make visible the fear through the fragile pulse of the man who holds the camera, the human fear became trembling.” The way the film was shot also gives us the idea of the experimental touch Balagueró and Plaza wanted for the movie. The shooting took place in a real location, an old building in downtown Barcelona. The stairs, apartments…they are all real scenarios that filmmakers used flawlessly to
create the sense of claustrophobia and desperation of the survivors. The actors, mostly nonprofessional or unknown by the general audience, were never given a final script. The two filmmakers met individually and “created” extreme situations that surprised the actors
themselves. In many cases, main characters are terrified by the sudden apparition of an “infected,” provoking a real scare, caused by the directors with the complicity of the “infected.”