You’ve Been Framed: The Horror Movie

REC 2 – Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza

Following on from the successful and different horror film from 2007, REC, this sequel is literally following on mere minutes from the events of the last film and doesn’t stop with the relentless tale of infection and killing. Full of blood and guts with hell lots of suspense and creepy settings, REC 2, the Spanish horror film using a new technique of filming, using shaky camerawork to try to emulate the feeling of being homemade, similar to The Blair Witch Project. Using that same technique, the directors have created a claustrophobic, tense zombie film that really puts you in the shoes of the survivors who are trying to escape or figure out what’s going on. With the sequel, supernatural explanations are used to describe what’s really going on in the block of flats, the same setting as the first film, with a disease that was manmade being passed down to small children who are then grown in a small laboratory in the penthouse of the building. It all sounds a little farfetched, true, but it’s clever in its description of it, in how it explains the how process and why this occurred. I won’t give away the whole surprised or give away too much, but the ending feels right, and with the film only being just over an hour long, it feels like it doesn’t get too ahead of itself with using the gimmick for too long. Also it uses a new technique in having multiple cameras with different people to cut from one to the other. It’s a good way of forwarding the story and not becoming repetitive of some of the material we’ve seen before.

With a new set of characters involving a government agent and a couple of swat team members, they bowl into the hell hole of death and try to find the virus and find out more information, leading to them finding out more information about the birth of the virus. A couple of twists later and half way through the film new characters are involved with a group of teenagers who break into the house along with a concerning father and a local fireman. It all ends horribly for some of them, not all of them. I won’t give away what happens but it’s a decent twist which ends nicely from both films. Watching both back to back might be a good experience if you haven’t seen either yet, it might show the whole picture. It should be fun to see what they do next with the franchise, which i know Quarantine is pretty much a rip off of, but will there be REC 3 or will it get too stale?

7/10

Simon Childs