REC

A-

Directed by Jaume Belaguero

One of the nice things about Fantasia, in my opinion at least, is that most of the films on display have not done the major film festival circuit or been relased to a wide enough audience worldwide for any type of critical consensus or "buzz" to be available about them yet. As such, there is often no real way of knowing for sure if the film you are about to watch is going to blow your socks off or be a total stinker. Not so with "REC," probably one of the most anticipated films to ever be shown at Fantasia, having already been lauded by critics worldwide and won a number of Goya Awards, the Spanish equivalent oft he Oscars.

The buzz is well deserved. "REC" is one of the most frightening, tense, and visceral film experiences you will likely ever experience, as it uses every single frame to craft an almost pitch perfect horror film that stands up against anything in the genre I have watched in a long, long time.

"REC" begins in a Barcelona fire department where local TV personality Angela and her cameraman Paulo are working on a segment unoriginally entitled "While you were Asleep" which will focus on oncovering the nocturnal activities of firemen. Their undeniably boring feature is mercilessly spiced up when the fir department receives a call from a nearby apartment building where tenants claim that an elderly lady is stuck in her apartment. Angela and Paulo tag along, hoping to infuse their feature with some much needed excitement. Once they arrive, however, the supposedly routine intervention turns into an emergency when the elderly lady visciously attacks a police officer. Hoping to get the badly injured officer some vital medical help, the firemen are shocked to find out that the apartment building has been sealed from the outside by the health authorities and no one is allowed to leave the premises.

Working on roughly the same premise as "28 Days Later," "REC" takes the terror to a whole new level by locking everyone up in a cramped apartment building and letting the nightmare unfold. The film, at a very paltry 75 minutes running time, doesn't even worry about character development or any type of backstory, choosing rather to thow us right into the fray while the terror escalates. The brevity of the film is actually beneficial as the lack of unecessary dialogue or character develoment allows the film to progress at a torid pace, the scares coming at an almost merciless clip. Easily one of the scariest and most masterfully concocted horror films I've ever watched, "REC" is not recommended for those with weak hearts as this one may very well send you to an early death.