Jaumè Balaguerò Paco Plaza
[REC]

If on a summer night you find yourself awake in bed due to the inhuman screams of some unspecified individual from the floor above, I suggest calling the police and quietly making a swift exit.

It is, in fact, a warm summer evening and Angela Vidàl and her cameraman Pablo (Idol) are in search of an easy scoop. They are at the fire station, waiting for a call that, inevitably, is late in coming. Time passes, they laugh and joke (ahhh 3+1 four, Piacentine cards and playing briscola...) and conduct awkward interviews. Then, a phone call arrives: an old lady is trapped in her apartment. The firefighters and the two reporters rush to what they think is a routine call...

Good old, dear, always great Jaumé Balagueró never disappoints me. Indeed, he makes you feel fear, it grows inside you and grabs your stomach, so that you wipe your eyes with your hand like a windshield wiper. Whether it's stories about creepy beings living in the dark, bastard daughters, or, in this case, hungry zombies, he always puts in the passion. This time, however, the work is directed with four hands because behind Pablo's camera is none other than Paco Plaza. So what? you might say, who the heck is this guy? He's the director of "Second Name," a film that went unnoticed here but was highly appreciated in its homeland. Rec is the first collaboration between the two.

The direction is superb. Everything is filmed with Pablo's camera (which carries the voice of the killer from Scream...) and the story is real and extremely engaging. The story, initially bland, takes a monstrous narrative shift, so much so that after the first "flight" of the firefighter there will be no more respite.

The last 20 minutes are horror anthology material, with bites, "slim presences," and various exorcisms, the film flows by, and for once, the "advertisement-like fear" is fully satisfied. Too much so. Jaumé Balagueró and Paco Plaza film a splendid true Horror, not afraid to show strong scenes softened here and there by funny interviews with the tenants.

Pablo, capture everything... damn it.

That this film is also a critique of the voracity of the media, ready to film even the most disturbing event with the unflinching eye of the camera, is quite evident. But this is not the true merit of the film; it is that it manages to immerse the viewer so much that they forget they are sitting in a comfortable chair.

What more could one ask from a Horror film?

Fousbury guaranteed.