[Rec]edingly good shakes...

[Rec] 2
Starring: Jonathan Mellor, Manuela Velasco, Oscar Zafra
Director: Jaume Balaguero, Paco Plaza
Rating: 2 and a half (out of 5)

Summary: Picking up almost immediately after the final scenes of the original, [Rec ] 2 sees a grizzled SWAT team, led by a Vatican exorcist, entering the quarantined apartment building on a mission to find a vile of contaminated blood - which could hold the key to a possession vaccine...

Using the handheld camera method and letting characters build as slowly and effectively as the tension, the original [Rec] was an exercise in effective and economical shooting. [Rec] 2 takes this template and attempts to expand the mythology - with mixed results.

This expansion takes a leaf out of the Aliens "how to die quickly and horribly" book by dropping a suitably sweaty, grunting SWAT team into the zombie ravaged Barcelona apartment block and conveniently placing cameras on their heads. This enables each gruesome death to be captured on out of focus, badly signalled Zombietron.

As well as making each death appear more visceral, it also gives the audience the impression that they're playing Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark - which is not a good thing. In fact, it simply adds another level of detachment between yourself and the increasing zombie fodder.

As the ever decreasing SWAT team open apartment doors and turn dark corners they encounter yet another silhouetted and still zombie at the end of a corridor (pick between young girl/boy zombie, old man/woman zombie and fat woman/fat man zombie) which greets them with a loud scream and a sprint towards the camera. In the original [Rec] this was tense, teetering on the edge of your seat scary stuff but this time around it smacks of simple hackneyed laziness.

In fact for the entire first half of the film, it seems as if directors Plaza and Balaguero have been infected with the very same Hollywood rehash virus which remade the original [Rec] as the toothless Quarantine. Simply adding more guns, more gore and more hardware to a sequel equals the law of diminishing returns and [REC ] 2 suffers badly from this.

However, just as you think you're simply watching Quarantine 2 with the wrong language setting, Plaza and Balaguero cut to proceedings outside the apartment building and a group of local youngsters wishing to cash in on five minutes of fame by breaking in. As we see their journey from playful, goading teenagers into infection ravaged, possessed puppets of a demon the film becomes exciting again. This narrative thread lets the mythology grow and in particular enables Jonathan Mellor as Dr.Owen to own the screen rather than share it with increasingly agitated and cliched SWAT members.

The reintroduction of heroine Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) at the same point gives [Rec] 2 an exciting and tense final act which harks back to the fresh and innovative feel of the original claustrophobic horror, but it's almost too little too late.

The most important thing in this genre is character and [Rec] 2 does not have it. The mythology being created is interesting and has the potential to be examined in further films but to do this Plaza and Balaguero need to go back to what made the original so frightening - namely spend more time creating believable, likeable people that the audience care about. [Rec] 2 is like two separate horror films from two separate horror cultures clashing and in the ensuing carnage we all lose.

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