Forty years after George Romero's seminal Night of the Living Dead (1968), the zombie sub-genre was almost bone dry. Years of stagnation wherein the old clichés were used over and over again had almost sucked all the fun out of it, and despite the occasional gem such as Braindead (1992) or Pontypool (2009), there wasn't much left in there to please, let alone surprise hardcore horror fans. We knew all the plot twists and all the situations. No zombie could be thrown at us that we didn't expect. The sub-genre thus played mostly for camp, sometimes using stereotypes to its advantage but never transcending the age-old formulas upon which it was created. Of course, the connotation of the word 'zombie' had changed over the years, evolving to fit contemporary fears. Thus, the living dead of old had become the infected carriers of today's germ-paranoid world. Conveniently enough, this allowed for "faster" zombies who could also spit blood and scream loudly, zombies who could capture the imagination of youths for whom the "slow-moving" zombies did nothing. But this didn't change the basic structure of zombie films; zombies were just faster now, so filmmakers needed only to shorten pursuit scenes by adding more frequent and more accessible safe havens.
On the other side of the spectrum, the new millenium began with a little film, which you may have heard of, called The Blair Witch Project (1999). Although this film did amazingly well at the time, using only POV shots to heighten the terror of the cameramen/protagonists, it was still merely seen as a lucky accident and the concept never really caught on. Nobody seemed to think it a good idea to apply this concept to a well-established sub-genre and thus cash in on it even more. Nobody until Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza released [Rec], a film that took the world by storm although it added nothing new to cinema. It merely achieved the successful mix of the two aforementioned elements. Here, narrative development is done by-the-book. Only the subjective camera makes a difference, but it is a huge one. It gives the film the lifelike look necessary to draw the viewer in and the raw power to glue him to his seat. The very title of the project pertains only to its central filming technique. That is to say, the subjective camera is the film. And although this film doesn't reinvent the wheel, it works. Plain and simple. It works much better than Matt Reeves' dubiously similar Cloverfield (2008) for it grounds the action in reality, not in fantasy. You see, Cloverfield is not such a bad film (although it emanates a faint but distinct stench of plagiarism). It simply overreaches its mandate, trying to force a huge CGI beastie within a shaky video diary. [Rec], on the other hand, never delves into the supernatural, using naturalistic sets, makeup and acting to the best of their potential while consecrating the raw potential of the subjective camera in itself, not merely surrounding it with special effects. The result draws the viewer right into the diegetic world and cultivates his sense of horror by highlighting the shortcomings of perception. [Rec] is an unusually smart film, but most of all, it is an opportunistic film, grabbing the ball fumbled by Myrick and Sanchez and running all the way to the goal line.
On the other side of the spectrum, the new millenium began with a little film, which you may have heard of, called The Blair Witch Project (1999). Although this film did amazingly well at the time, using only POV shots to heighten the terror of the cameramen/protagonists, it was still merely seen as a lucky accident and the concept never really caught on. Nobody seemed to think it a good idea to apply this concept to a well-established sub-genre and thus cash in on it even more. Nobody until Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza released [Rec], a film that took the world by storm although it added nothing new to cinema. It merely achieved the successful mix of the two aforementioned elements. Here, narrative development is done by-the-book. Only the subjective camera makes a difference, but it is a huge one. It gives the film the lifelike look necessary to draw the viewer in and the raw power to glue him to his seat. The very title of the project pertains only to its central filming technique. That is to say, the subjective camera is the film. And although this film doesn't reinvent the wheel, it works. Plain and simple. It works much better than Matt Reeves' dubiously similar Cloverfield (2008) for it grounds the action in reality, not in fantasy. You see, Cloverfield is not such a bad film (although it emanates a faint but distinct stench of plagiarism). It simply overreaches its mandate, trying to force a huge CGI beastie within a shaky video diary. [Rec], on the other hand, never delves into the supernatural, using naturalistic sets, makeup and acting to the best of their potential while consecrating the raw potential of the subjective camera in itself, not merely surrounding it with special effects. The result draws the viewer right into the diegetic world and cultivates his sense of horror by highlighting the shortcomings of perception. [Rec] is an unusually smart film, but most of all, it is an opportunistic film, grabbing the ball fumbled by Myrick and Sanchez and running all the way to the goal line.
First of all, I can't insist enough on how brilliant it was to cast Manuela Velasco in the lead role. At that point in her career, she was well-known in Spain as a VJ and TV presenter packaged to the masses using short skirts, high-heel boots and some jaw-dropping cleavage (just look here and tell me if the latter half of this video doesn't remind you of a famous shot from [Rec]). By using this preexisting persona and eventually subverting it, Balaguero and Plaza have not only tapped into a ready-made anchor point to their diegetic world, but they have allowed the young woman to transcend both her character in the film and her regular TV persona (granting her a Goya Award for Breakthrough Performance in the process).
The film starts out exquisitely by framing Manuela's alter-ego, Angela Vidal, while she is practicing the opening lines of her present report with cameraman Pablo. Her presence alone as a diegetic TV presenter draws the viewer right into the film's trap, namely the appearance of reality, carefully constructed for optimal shock to the viewer. Hence, While you are Asleep (the in-film TV show) becomes a mere continuation of her previous work and you can thus approach it as you would Cuatrosfera, sit down comfortably and enjoy its familiar construction. At this point, we're only one second into the film, and already we find it surprisingly relevant. After that, we only have to wait a couple more seconds for Manuela to further anchor the film in reality. This is achieved when the first blooper is included, then cut to show a second one. Angela fumbles her lines, then she starts over, and over again. The directors are thus telling us that what's onscreen is not a carefully planned event, i.e. not an horror film in the classical term of the film. It is rather composed of images caught on the fly, improvised along the way. And when Manuela/Angela addresses the cameraman, staring right at the lens, she further contributes to this idea by breaking the fourth wall, hence breaking the illusion of reality. This leaves us with only reality, which is what the film vies to offer us. All of these devices, implemented right from the start with amazing savvy, take the action far away from the world of make-belief wherein zombie narratives usually take place and into the best approximation of what the real world can be. We are thus not "in the near future", "in the days following the crash of a space probe", or "28 days later". We are in the here and now, in the world of real terror where real people live real lives.
This point is made also by the very report Angela and Pablo are shooting. It is a report about the day-to-day lives of firemen, the very mundane, very common unfolding of these people's lives. And this is what we see for the first ten minutes of the film: life as plain as can be. At some point, Angela even starts getting bored with the lack of action, the lack of exciting material to shoot. And thus, we find ourselves in the world we roam everyday, a world which is so safe and familiar that the smallest break in its unified façade can make us topple into the nether realms of anxiety and terror. At this point in the narrative, the protagonist embodies all which is wholesome and non-threatening. She is back in the studio of Los 40 principales doing her thing. Her gorgeous long hair tied in pig-tails, her slightly prominent front teeth and her small red coat transform her once more into the cute cartoon character she was made up to be by the station. She is still a very comforting figure at this point and thus a perfect bridge between our living room and the fire station within the frame. It is only through her ordeal that she will become a more substantial, feminized character, dropping the coat to reveal a fetching white tank top that seems to magically attract blood stains, losing the pig-tails and gaining assertiveness as a serious TV reporter. Thus, Manuela's real-life transformation from cute videoclip-presenting doll to respected, award-winning actress finds echo in the evolution of her character in the film, who begins as a week-end journalist covering the mundane, creating TV filler for undiscriminating masses, but then using a great opportunity fallen from the sky to take her rightful place in the world and become what she could only dream of, namely a professional worthy of her peers' respect. This whole set-up is almost too perfect. And it makes for a perfect threshold toward the darker depths of the film as the opening images are perfectly familiar, with nothing to foreshadow the horrible things to come. That's how we can enter the diegetic world so seamlessly. Because it is our world, which we believe to be safe, and the downfall of which is thus even more shocking than that of Romero's worlds.
The film starts out exquisitely by framing Manuela's alter-ego, Angela Vidal, while she is practicing the opening lines of her present report with cameraman Pablo. Her presence alone as a diegetic TV presenter draws the viewer right into the film's trap, namely the appearance of reality, carefully constructed for optimal shock to the viewer. Hence, While you are Asleep (the in-film TV show) becomes a mere continuation of her previous work and you can thus approach it as you would Cuatrosfera, sit down comfortably and enjoy its familiar construction. At this point, we're only one second into the film, and already we find it surprisingly relevant. After that, we only have to wait a couple more seconds for Manuela to further anchor the film in reality. This is achieved when the first blooper is included, then cut to show a second one. Angela fumbles her lines, then she starts over, and over again. The directors are thus telling us that what's onscreen is not a carefully planned event, i.e. not an horror film in the classical term of the film. It is rather composed of images caught on the fly, improvised along the way. And when Manuela/Angela addresses the cameraman, staring right at the lens, she further contributes to this idea by breaking the fourth wall, hence breaking the illusion of reality. This leaves us with only reality, which is what the film vies to offer us. All of these devices, implemented right from the start with amazing savvy, take the action far away from the world of make-belief wherein zombie narratives usually take place and into the best approximation of what the real world can be. We are thus not "in the near future", "in the days following the crash of a space probe", or "28 days later". We are in the here and now, in the world of real terror where real people live real lives.
This point is made also by the very report Angela and Pablo are shooting. It is a report about the day-to-day lives of firemen, the very mundane, very common unfolding of these people's lives. And this is what we see for the first ten minutes of the film: life as plain as can be. At some point, Angela even starts getting bored with the lack of action, the lack of exciting material to shoot. And thus, we find ourselves in the world we roam everyday, a world which is so safe and familiar that the smallest break in its unified façade can make us topple into the nether realms of anxiety and terror. At this point in the narrative, the protagonist embodies all which is wholesome and non-threatening. She is back in the studio of Los 40 principales doing her thing. Her gorgeous long hair tied in pig-tails, her slightly prominent front teeth and her small red coat transform her once more into the cute cartoon character she was made up to be by the station. She is still a very comforting figure at this point and thus a perfect bridge between our living room and the fire station within the frame. It is only through her ordeal that she will become a more substantial, feminized character, dropping the coat to reveal a fetching white tank top that seems to magically attract blood stains, losing the pig-tails and gaining assertiveness as a serious TV reporter. Thus, Manuela's real-life transformation from cute videoclip-presenting doll to respected, award-winning actress finds echo in the evolution of her character in the film, who begins as a week-end journalist covering the mundane, creating TV filler for undiscriminating masses, but then using a great opportunity fallen from the sky to take her rightful place in the world and become what she could only dream of, namely a professional worthy of her peers' respect. This whole set-up is almost too perfect. And it makes for a perfect threshold toward the darker depths of the film as the opening images are perfectly familiar, with nothing to foreshadow the horrible things to come. That's how we can enter the diegetic world so seamlessly. Because it is our world, which we believe to be safe, and the downfall of which is thus even more shocking than that of Romero's worlds.
Is this Manuela? Is this Angela? No matter who, she is the
perfect hostess to escort us through the diegetic world
As I mentioned above, the film starts out innocently during a TV report about the day-to-day life of firemen on the night shift. Nothing happens at first. We see the guys eating in the mess hall, playing basketball, sleeping... An interviewee even explains how his work consists mostly of repairing leaking pipes and rescuing pets. From his testimony, it seems that poor Angela and Pablo are in for quite a boring night, which seems to be the norm in their line of work. When a call finally comes in, although it sounds pretty unexciting at first, the pair jumps aboard the first truck dispatched on location along with firemen Alex and Manu. Even as they reach the apartment building where the call originated, finding a police car with its lights on by the door and a bevy of distressed neighbors in the hall, there's still no reason to suspect anything other than domestic disturbance, at least, as long as the protagonists are concerned. But when the screaming starts, inhuman shrieks with no distinctive origin filling the entire building, when the old woman mentioned in the call is found bloodied and fiercely aggressive, the whole world starts falling apart, the world in which we have so willingly been drawn. The following events need not be described in too many details, as you will probably expect every twist and turn from then on. You see, the old woman shrieking is actually infected with a rabies-like disease that causes blood-thirst and an apparent immunity to bullets. When she manages to bite one of the policemen trying to calm her, the narrative events start to trickle down as expected, respecting the familiar "domino" structure of standard zombie films. The building is quarantined, the policeman unexpectedly wakes up from his ethereal coma, bites and infects another character, which infects yet another one until everyone but Angela and the cameraman (obviously) are left standing. The climax is set in the building's pitch-black penthouse where we are given a partial explanation about the nature of the disease. And when I say partial, I mean very partial and thankfully so. There's no all-encompassing revelation to fill in the blanks here but many confused bits of evidence pertaining to the strange experiments of an icon-obsessed Christian madman. These confused bits of evidence play more for scares than for exposition per se as they only create affect, decorating the filthy walls of the madman's lair and displacing the nature of the outbreak away from a purely medical standpoint into the (creepier) area of religion and madness. That said, the film ends exactly as you would expect it to. And that's an obvious limitation of entirely subjective horror films: there's one way and one way only to end those films: dropping the camera to the floor and letting the viewers figure out what happens to the protagonists after that.
Although the subjective camera generally causes underwhelming finales, the directors here had the decency to leave us with a final shot that's both creepy and enticing thanks to its surprising mix of cleavage, repulsive night vision and a dire fate for lovely Angela which we can only imagine with tearful indignation. Still, it remains a very predictable finale. But that's only a small tradeoff for the dreadful sense of immediacy that the subjective camera creates and which fuels the dated narrative all the way through. This camera allows the viewer to be an integrant part of the action, making the events unfolding around him to be "live events" elapsing in real time without any breaks in the action caused by parallel editing, thus putting a continuous strain on him. You end up being trapped with the other characters, unable to leave the building by cutting to a location outside (such as a police station, military base or other such "safe" location) and thus the feeling of constant menace is left unbroken. This also helps to keep the mystery surrounding the nature of the disease whole as you never know more than the characters around you, nor can you learn to know them through other means than simple observation or TV-style interviews. You end up being manipulated and processed just as they are, sharing their terror and paranoia along the way. Most importantly, you come to experience the cameraman's terror by stepping right into his shoes and sharing his feelings to the best of the camera's abilities. This is achieved mostly by emulation of "real" movement. That said, the careful steps taken by Pablo when entering old Conchita's apartment are our own. Just as he, we don't know what we will find in the darkened depths of her cluttered home. At that moment, we feel the cameraman's pulse-pounding anticipation. The same is true when he starts running while pursued by rabid zombies. The sense of panic is perfectly captured by the shaking frame and we thus come to believe that we are also pursued by the infected. What's even more impressive is when the monsters start running right toward us, screaming and drooling in inhuman fashion. We then become the object of their blood thirst and it is us who must find shelter as quickly as possible. The action grips us, not some sacrificial character whose terror we can only try to interpret with the limited data provided by the screenplay. The human mind is such that it is much harder to project our own terror onto even the most sympathetic victim than to feel it into our guts, which is what POV shots offer. They tickle our survival instinct by making our health in jeopardy, not that of others whose pain is only as shocking as the quality of their characterization allows.
Here's looking straight at you, kid.
Other than allowing the silent cameraman and the viewer to become one, subjectivity questions the very nature of perception within film, which is entirely relevant to a genre that thrives on the opposition between the seen and the unseen. POV shots both enhance vision and reduce it. By using the zoom and by rewinding the tape, we are allowed to transcend sight and spot horrific details that we might have missed, all the while being constantly reminded of the presence of the camera as the driving force behind the narrative. The camera also possess the ability to instantly generate light sources where there is none, illuminating pitch black rooms with creepy mood lighting. In the end, it even comes down to the night vision filter, which shows only darkness and green silhouettes with panicked pale eyes, adding more and more to the atmosphere of dread permeating the cluttered apartments contained inside the building. Instead of using the soundtrack to generate the sense of impending doom necessary to grab the viewer by the guts, the film simply uses darkness. Because although one could say that the spotlight and night-vision filter allow the characters to see, I would rather say that it allows them "not to see". In effect, a portable light source actually lessens the perception of the viewer when you compare it to a fixed light source, such as a spot used in classic films (which illuminates the entire set). It creates a lot of dark areas wherein the monsters can creep but most of all, it surrounds us with darkness, making us unsure of where the next attack will come from. The affective possibilities of the hand-held camera (and hand-held light source) is used to maximal effect once the night-vision filter is activated since we thus see Angela not seeing, scanning the room helplessly with her big, beautiful eyes caught in the greenish glow of the filter. At this point, only we can see the tall, skeletal creature wandering in the distance in search of fresh victims. We understand that the creature cannot see the protagonists, this privilege belonging only to the camera-wielder. But as the creature gets closer and closer, as the minute details of her wiry arms are revealed, that privilege becomes meaningless since we are now at arm's length of the beast and any movement can betray our presence. Tension builds and builds as the predator roams about Angela and Pedro, placing us in its reach as well and creating one of the most intense sequence of all the horror genre. But despite all this, despite the unnerving mechanics of the light halo plunging all the scenery in darkness but one bright spot and the night-vision limiting our perception to silhouettes, you also have to consider the crucial moment it takes for the cameraman to flip on the spotlight or night vision filter. This very short laps of time is very heavy on mood as we lose sight but not the sense of immediacy provided by the camera. We can hear people screaming in panic all around us and those screams fill our hearts with anguish, making us manically eager for the light to come on but equally fearful at the same time since it might reveal a monstrous face staring right at us. This technique is used to optimal effect when the mounted spotlight is knocked down by a briefly appearing zombie, plunging us in total darkness with the intimate knowledge of a nefarious nearby presence. This proceeds from a simple shock tactic (the suddenly appearing monster) to create a scene of genuine, palpable tension that perfectly exemplifies the directors' proficiency at using the subjective camera to go one step beyond your average zombie film. As far as the limitations of perception go, sound also plays a major part in establishing the mood. The loud screams heard sporadically are imprecise in nature and in location. They contribute to the mood by suggesting the presence of monsters ready to emerge from the shadows at any moment as well as making the very nature of those monsters remain sketchy, leaving us with only what we can imagine. What we retain from those sounds is only what our flawed sense of perception (and that of the camera itself) allow.
The camera manages to enhance and diminish our perception
at the same time by high-lighting darkened details
and surrounding them by deeper shadows
Another feature of the subjective camera is its ability to squeeze wherever its carrier can, offering the viewer access to very confined spaces, most notably the crowded apartments of the besieged tenants. Those apartments are so full of doors and bulky furniture that they become real labyrinths contributing their maze-like architecture to the sense of entrapment and disorientation that's omnipresent in the film. Claustrophobia might not seem to be an issue at first, and being trapped in the building isn't such a big deal for the characters who are still free to move around between floors. But as the zombies keep multiplying, transforming many locations into danger zones, space becomes more and more constrained and the protagonists' movement soon becomes forced by circumstances until they are trapped in the penthouse of all places. And despite previous hints as to its vacancy, the penthouse is actually more crowded than the apartments below. Seen only through the camera's spotlight, the creepy Christian paraphernalia cluttering the many rooms and the cropped newspapers articles covering the walls make for a marvelously chilling set for the climax, sort of a mix between the cabin from The Evil Dead (1981)and John Doe's apartment in Se7en (1995).
Despite a mostly generic screenplay following a dated formula, [Rec] manages to elevate its game thanks to a savvy use of all the subjective camera's potential. But most of all, it works because it keeps the film within the boundaries of palpable reality, using very little special effects, constrained sets and a very competent star brilliantly cast in a mirror role. From my point of view, Manuela winning the Goya for Breakthrough Performance is the story of the film. It should be recognized by all as the crowning selling point of the entire project since it entirely validates the transformation of her character within the film while also validating Balaguero and Plaza's bid to heighten realism by using the most mundane of set-ups (the harmless TV report) to drag us in and strap us for the ride. So, I will give thanks to the lovely Manuela and wish her to break a leg in whatever project she is to undertake in the future. But most of all, I will thank Balaguero and Plaza for initiating her transformation and making their own project that more relevant at the same time. The remainder of their success stems from their rightful exploitation of a great initial idea.
3,5/5 A gritty, gripping, genre-savvy film that manages to elevate a formulaic storyline through simple technical prowess and the amazingly brilliant casting of Manuela Velasco.
