Friday, July 9, 2010

We Reviewed [Rec] 2, Like, Seven Months Ago

Posted by on Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 4:37 PM

rec2.jpg
Those of you who follow the week's new releases may have been disappointed to see that nobody here at The L reviewed new release [Rec] 2. But ACTUALLY I saw [Rec] 2, like, seven months ago, when it played as part of Film at Lincoln Center's "Spanish Cinema Now" series, and reviewed it for the blog then. You can read that review here.

A sample after the jump, but you should know that the movie is good, though as good as the first. If you still haven't seen [Rec], you should go rent it tonight, or even American-redo Quarantine, which is basically a shot-for-shot remake and just as good.

Like its nearly identical and essentially interchangeable American remake Quarantine, the Spanish horror film [Rec] was literally a thriller of escalation: as the movie progressed, and the tension mounted, our characters climbed the stairs of the Barcelona apartment complex in which they’d been, um, quarantined, the last surviving characters ultimately meeting their violent ends in the building’s penthouse. In the sequel, [Rec] 2, which in the Grand Horror Tradition of The Bride of Frankenstein and Halloween II picks up where its precursor left off, the characters move around the premises more liberally: while making a quick survey of the splattery remnants of the last film’s carnage, our heroes go straight to the top floor, then down a few flights, then back up to the penthouse, into a crowning crawlspace (for a nod to Alien, of course), and so on. The excitement follows suit: the dread in [Rec] mounted relentlessly; [Rec] 2 is a lot of ups-and-downs.

Tags: , , ,

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this thread:

Add a comment

More by Henry Stewart

Most Commented On

Most Shared Stories

Top Viewed Stories

Top Topics in The Measure

Film (43)


Music (32)


TV (23)


Art (22)


News (21)


Sex (16)


Media (14)


Books (10)


Theater (9)


Nightlife (8)


© 2013 The L Magazine
Website powered by Foundation