[●REC]4

Dir: Jaume Balagueró. Spain. 2014. 95mins

The Spanish [●REC] horror franchise demonstrates an admirable ability to evolve beyond its original premise and format – sidestepping the interchangeability that blights many long-running horror series. As with the Alien and Psycho series, there are givens for a [●REC] film – an outbreak of viral demonic possession, for a start – but each individual entry forges its own identity. 

Balagueró and co-writer Manu Diez do include some plot surprises, but are mostly content to spring the same old scares.

[●REC] (2007), co-directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, starred Manuela Velasco as lightweight TV journo Angela Vidal, who happened to be shooting a documentary about firefighters when the outbreak began in a Barcelona block of flats.  The duo reteamed for [●REC]2(2009), which showed the infection getting out of the building, but then split to deliver alternate sequels. 

Plaza’s [●REC]3 Génesis (2012) was the Evil Dead 2 of the series, getting away from found footage and delivering gory slapstick with a surprising romantic streak, while Balagueró’s [●REC]4 (aka [●REC] Apocalypse) similarly abandons the now-overworked found footage format (as used in the US [●REC] remakeQuarantine) but reverts to the grimmer style of the earlier films. 

Velasco, who sat out the last film, returns and the potential victims are cooped up in another enclosed environment – a rust-bucket ship co-opted by the shadowy authorities investigating the curse/plague.  It’s worth remembering that Armando de Ossorio’sBlind Dead series of the 1970s – the previous Spanish supernatural zombie franchise – also went shipboard in its fourth entry, El Buque Maldito (1974).

The battered, once-possessed Vidal and a couple of characters – macho HAZMAT boffin Guzmán (Paco Manzanedo) and a dotty old wedding guest (Maria Alfonsa Rosso) – who have suffered in the events described by the earlier sequels are taken to the ship under the care of a sinister scientist (Héctor Colomé) who is hoping to synthesise a cure for the demonic disease.  An infected monkey is mysteriously let out of its restraints and winds up in the food served to the requisite gun-toting grunts by a possessed cook, and the horror spreads again. 

Vidal tries to prove she’s not the host of a devil worm that’s the source of the virus and hooks up with this installment’s liveliest new character, tech whizz Nic (Ismael Fritschi) – a superfan of her trivial TV show so starstruck that he barely notices the zombie attacks.  Balagueró stages the chaos impressively, but – as with most fourth go-rounds of any given premise – there is a certain familiarity that hampers the scares.  The use of an outboard motor as a zombie-shredding device is ingenious but hardly unprecedented.

Balagueró and co-writer Manu Diez do include some plot surprises, but are mostly content to spring the same old scares.  It’s a less distinctive film than the oddly sweet, ultra-gory [●REC]3 Génesis – which didn’t find favour with some [●REC] purists – but it keeps its pot boiling decently.  Last-reel developments suggest any [●REC]5might go the mutant fish route.

Production companies: Filmax, Rec Apocalipse, Somnium Films

Producer: Julio Fernandez

Executive producer: Carlos Fernandez, Adria Mones, Laura Fernandez

Screenplay: Jaume Balagueró, Manu Diez

Cinematography: Pablo Rosso

Editor: David Gallart

Music: Arnau Bataller

Main cast: Manuela Velasco, Paco Manzanedo, Héctor Colomé, Ismael Fritschi, Crispulo Cabezas, Mariano Venancio, Maria Alfonsa Rosso