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BEASTS

BREASTS

Directors: Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza
Writers:Jaume Balagueró & Luis Berdejo
Cast---
Manuela Velasco ... Ángela Vidal
Ferran Terraza ... Manu
Jorge Serrano ... Policía Joven (as
Jorge-Yamam Serrano)
Pablo Rosso ... Pablo
David Vert ... Álex
Vicente Gil ... Policía Adulto
Martha Carbonell ... Sra. Izquierdo
Carlos Vicente ... Guillem Marimon

Runtime: Argentina:80 min | France:80 min |
South Korea:78 min | UK:75 min

[REC] (2007)

   Claustrophobia is scary. Zombies are scary. The dark is scary. All three elements are woven together
perfectly in this Spanish chiller from Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, who are pretty much resurrecting
the Spanish horror film on their own. You might have seen the American remake, "QUARANTINE", but let
me assure you that the original is much scarier and a thousand times more believable.

   The film begins in a fire station where our heroine Angela is filming a segment for a news program
called "While You're Asleep". This sets up the reason for the film looking like a "BLAIR WITCH" ripoff, but
that couldn't be farther from the truth. In the first 7 minutes Angela jokes and plays around with her
segment and the firemen, and everything comes off incredibly real. This is important. Very soon after we
believe everyone is not acting, the firemen get called into action. Angela and her cameraman tag along
and follow two firemen into an apartment building where the neighbors are complaing about the screams
coming out of an old ladies apartment.

   They run upstairs with the cops that have responded to the scene and find the old lady bloody and
out of her freaking mind! She bites one of the cops and all hell breaks loose. It is obvious that something
is going wrong here and as soon as they help the bleeding cop back down to the lobby they find that
more police and even the military have arrived and have quarantined the building for some strange
reason. They try their best to escape but soon the infection or whatever you want to call it starts to
spread and more people get bit and the neighbors start to freak out. A doctor is let into the building to
test everyone and explains that a strange virus was detected in one of the neighbor's pets and that
tipped them off that something extremely aggressive was infecting people and making them extremely
aggressive.

   All hell breaks loose yet again as the zombies break free from their bonds and the survivors try to
survive the best they can in the dark apartment building with a winding spiral staircase running right
through the heart of it. At the end they try to give us an explanation for the outbreak, linking it to an old
case of a little girl who according to the church was possessed by demons. The man who lives in the
attic apparently studied the phenomena and found it was caused by a virus and not by the devil. The girl
is actually still in the house and is let loose at the end. She is the scariest, most realist zombie I have
ever seen! If you know Rubber Johnny, you know what I mean when I say realistic and scary.

   The film not only has better acting than "QUARANTINE", but there is better camera work, and there is
this creepy, moaning soundtrack playing subtly under the action of the film that really helps to unnerve
the viewer. The film excellently captures the jump-out scares of a haunted house. The only problem with
the film is that the infection takes a long time to resurrect the dead throughout the beginning, but by the
last twenty minutes, everyone becomes a zombie immediately. This is a cheat, but such a minor one that
it didn't really bother me that much. This is an intense, and scary movie that I promise will have you
jumping our of your seat at least a rotting handful of times.


                                                                                                                = Jose Prendes

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