Falling Sky: You'll Never Live In A Penthouse Again

[REC]

A few weeks back I went along to see George Romero's Diary of the Dead, having enjoyed his previous films. It was shit. Pretentious, pedestrian, shallow and hypocritical, it's biggest crime was failing to be remotely thrilling or scary. Having started the year with a cracking piece of handheld terror in the form of Cloverfield, it was infuriating to see how flawed Diary was, given its potential. I came away from it thoroughly narked and imagining how good, how intense, how scary a good bloody zombie film could be filmed handheld, if only it were done right.

Thank fuck, then, for [REC], a Spanish film that's been doing the festival rounds since last year but just got a UK release this weekend. At 85 minutes it's brief, breathless and incredibly efficient, the majority of the film set in just one tenement location. It has no message, no moral, and being near-real-time there's hardly enough time for character development, narrative twists or any of that malarky. Instead, like the aforementioned Cloverfield, it's more of an experience, a ghost train par excellence, the film a device to run the audience through a wringer of tension and fear. And, praise the lords, it works.

The less you know of the plot the more satisfying it'll be - I had little idea what happens in it aside from TV crew with firemen gets trapped inside a tenement building and things get badly, bloodily wrong. And, oh lordy, does it. As with Cloverfield, the opening 15 minutes are deliberately quite bland and uneventful - of course, we know something's going to happen sometime, but it's the wait that lets the tension start to build. It cranks up that much further once things do start happening, delivering a few superb "HOLY FUCK!!" moments on the way. The premise and actual use of handheld filming is extremely believable in this film, moreso than parts of Cloverfield and far more so that Diary, becoming increasingly more frantic and desperate as the film progresses. Likewise, by being restricted to just one location, a feeling of intense claustrophobia and panic is built up. [REC] definitely deserves to be seen in the cinema, with surprisingly effective use of sound and the moments of darkness all the more powerful for being near-absolute. It's not particularly gory but still not for squeamish types or those unlikely to enjoy an hour of sustained terror (now, why does that sound so strange?).

[REC] is very much a film to experience, to react to, rather than sit back and watch passively - as it progressed I became aware of adrenaline in my veins, muscles tensed and eyes boggling just that little bit wider than usual. There's an American remake of it out due in October which, if it follows previous US remakes of non-English-langauge horror, will be more polished, more CGI'd and far less effective (still, you never know), . Horror fans should leap at the chance to catch this at the cinema, as should anyone who liked Cloverfield and fancies something a little harder. Indeed, just like Cloverfield and 28 Weeks Later the film seems focused primarily on terrorising the audience, rather than the subtler drawn-out fear of The Orphanage (still on, still essential). This reaches its climax in a truly dread-filled final 15 minutes that manages to give some fascinating context as to what's been happening and deliver a really, really disturbing sight that's been replaying in my brain at bedtime for the last two nights. Not enough to bring on sleepless nights - no film's managed that - and I'm bloody glad I've had no nightmares featuring said sight, but remarkable nonetheless. It's rare enough to have one film come out and give me the willies, but two within a month of each other? Happy days!