REC (2007) | Plot, Cast & Horror Facts

REC is a 2007 Spanish found-footage horror film about a TV crew trapped inside a quarantined Barcelona apartment building during a violent outbreak.

At a Glance

Overview

Ángela Vidal is the host of a late-night television programme called While You’re Sleeping, and tonight she and her cameraman, Pablo, are filming a routine shift at a Barcelona fire station. When a call comes in about an elderly woman behaving erratically in an apartment building, Ángela and Pablo ride along with firefighters Álex and Manu. Inside the flat, the woman attacks and bites a police officer. Within minutes, the authorities outside seal every exit, and residents, firefighters, police and the TV crew are trapped together under quarantine.

Everything the audience sees comes through Pablo’s camera, and the directors treat that limitation as a weapon. People run in and out of frame, the light fails, and Ángela keeps insisting that Pablo film everything, even as the building fills with infected residents. A health official in protective gear arrives and explains that the illness resembles rabies and may have started with a dog in the building. That explanation turns out to be only part of the truth. Like The Blair Witch Project, REC sells its terror through the feeling that the footage is real, but it moves far faster, with the siege energy of Night of the Living Dead packed into a single stairwell.

Production

Filmax announced in October 2006 that Balagueró and Plaza would direct the film together. The directors said they set out to tell a classic horror story in “the language of television,” as if a live news report were unfolding with one camera at the centre of the events. Principal photography took place in late 2006 in Barcelona. The script was finalised inside the apartment building used for filming and reshaped around what was physically available there. The opening scenes were shot at a working fire station with real firefighters, and the crew were sometimes interrupted by genuine emergency calls.

The film was shot in chronological order, and the cast were not given the full script. The directors even handed out a false ending to keep the actors’ reactions fresh, and several scares were staged without warning some of the performers. Pablo Rosso, the film’s cinematographer, also plays the cameraman Pablo.

Cast

• Manuela Velasco as Ángela Vidal
• Pablo Rosso as Pablo, the cameraman
• Ferrán Terraza as Manu
• Supporting cast: David Vert, Vicente Gil, Jorge-Yamam Serrano, Martha Carbonell, Carlos Vicente

Reception

REC premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in August 2007, then played Sitges, where it won Best Director, Best Actress for Velasco, the audience award and the critics’ award. At Spain’s 22nd Goya Awards it won Best New Actress for Velasco and Best Editing for David Gallart. Rotten Tomatoes lists 90 percent approval from 42 reviews, praising it as proof that found footage can still deliver sparse, economic horror, and Metacritic gives it 71 out of 100. Writing for the BBC, Jamie Russell called it “A runaway rollercoaster of a fright flick.” The film grossed about $32.5 million on a budget of about $2 million, launched the REC series, and was remade in America as Quarantine (2008).

Spoiler: The Ending

As the outbreak overwhelms the survivors, Ángela and Pablo fight their way up to the sealed penthouse. Inside they find religious material and a tape recording. The occupant had been working on behalf of the Vatican, studying a sick Portuguese girl named Tristana Medeiros whose condition was believed to be demonic possession. The illness mutated into a contagion, and the girl was locked away in the penthouse. In the dark attic, Pablo switches the camera to night vision. An emaciated Tristana appears and kills Pablo. Ángela drops the camera, and in the final shot she is dragged screaming into the darkness as the footage ends.

Trivia & Facts

• The title is short for “record,” styled on screen as [•REC] like a camera display.
• It was shot in chronological order, and the cast were given a false ending.
• The opening was filmed at a real Barcelona fire station with real firefighters.
• Velasco kept the same white top throughout so it could get dirtier and bloodier scene by scene.
• It was followed by REC 2 (2009), REC 3: Genesis (2012) and REC 4: Apocalypse (2014).
• The American remake Quarantine came out in 2008, followed by Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011).