Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. As much as I harp on found footage as a genre, there are a few examples of found footage I like. The [REC] films really impressed me. Yes, even [REC]2. I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I loved what they did with the sequel.
The first film is pretty much a straight up zombie outbreak film and a good one at that. The sequel takes your expectations and twists them around, really expanding on the mythology of the first film in a different and fascinating way. The zombies have a demonic possession element to them and while the horror tone is the same it’s now in an ALIENS-esque survival horror vain. There are some rather annoying teens that just randomly pop up in the sequel, but they way the filmmakers integrate them into the story and their payoff really makes it hard for me to hate on them because of their first impression.
[REC]3 starts off well. It’s the wedding of a very cute couple played by Leticia Dolera and Javier Botet, and they’re that stupidly sick lovebird couple. This really is the best day of their lives, so of course zombies have to ruin everything.
You know that moment that happens early on in every found footage film, where one of the characters looks at the guy manning the camera and go “why the fuck are you filming right now!?!” It’s always when the shit hits the fan and the filmmakers have to acknowledge how stupid it is that the gimmick carries on when in reality anybody would drop the camera and, you know, have both hands free to fight zombies/giant monsters/trolls/witches/ghosts or whatever horror creature is messing up their day.
That scene happens in this movie, of course, and the characters pretty much go… Yeah, this is stupid and BAM, the rest of the film is a real movie. Sure, we get about 25 seconds worth of cutaways to security cam footage, but from then on it’s a traditionally shot film.
And man, was I onboard for that. What a great way to defy expectation and really make this sequel (or parallelquel, I guess… since it takes place at the same time as the events of the first 2 [REC] films) have its own personality.
But then I almost immediately disconnected, not because of the switch from shaky-cam to high production value, but because the tone started sliding all over the map. Gone is the doomed horror-movie vibe as the newly wedded bride and groom search for each other through a battlefield of zombies, which seem to vary between Romero slow zombies and the regular crazed zombies from the previous [REC] films depending on what the director needed them to do from scene to scene. In its place was this half-committed horror comedy vibe that just didn’t work for me.
I would have been fine if the horror comedy tone was done right. Look at Shaun of the Dead. It’s a silly movie, but has genuine moments of heart and real consequences that you feel authentic empathy for. Stuff also happens in Shaun. Here, when we should really care about these two lovers finding each other I found myself growing more and more bored as they just wandered around. I swear to God there’s an underground tunnel stroll the bride takes that lasts for 10 minutes.
For a horror comedy I felt a surprising lack of fun in the movie. It really wants to be Braindead, but never goes full-bore, which leaves it in this netherworld between a good horror movie and a good gory comedy that I just found tedious. I spent most of the second half of the movie waiting for it to end.
Production value was solid, the acting was good, the leads likeable, but the story just becomes muddled and distracted to the point where I disconnected and despite a nice final 5 minutes the movie never won me back.
Oh well, can’t win ‘em all, I guess. Keep an eye out for more SXSW coverage from me and the Ain’t It Cool team. I have the new William Friedkin flick, Killer Joe, on the docket tomorrow, plus I’ll pound out my Cabin in the Woods review sometime in the afternoon, too! Stay tuned!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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