by Jason Adams
Whenever you read a plot synopsis of the 2007 found-footage masterpiece [REC] by Spanish filmmakers Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza (both of whom have gone on to make outstanding films on their own, not to mention a couple of outstanding sequels to [REC] itself) it's worth noting that the synopsis always leaves out the first fifteen minutes of the movie. It's always like this, stolen off Wikipedia:
"Reporter Ángela Vidal and her cameraman Pablo are covering the night shift in one of Barcelona's local fire stations for the documentary television series While You're Sleeping. While they are recording, the firehouse receives a call about an old woman..."
There is far more meat to that "while they are recording" then one would think... fifteen minutes of meat, give or take. And the rest of the movie wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without it, because this is where we get to know the superhero-to-be Ángela Vidal (played with fire and fury by Manuela Velasco) and become intimate with all of the killer traits that will go on to make of her, by the film's final frame, one of horror's great Final Girls.
Velasco was a well-known presence in Spain before [REC] came along -- she'd been a child actor (exactly 20 years before [REC] she played little Ada in Pedro Almodovar's Law of Desire) and in the way of European stardom she had done a lot of TV presenting over the years, a skill-set that was vital to her stellar turn here as Ángela Vidal, intrepid reporter on the firehouse beat. Her natural charm in front of a camera, the way she manages to turn it on and off and make an entire side-story out of her relationship with the camera itself -- an arc that would become integral to the entire sub-genre, and I don't know if any Found Footage film has done it better.
A lot of [REC] feels like that, even though it came eight years after the phenom Blair Witch -- watch a found footage film post-2007 and half their tricks are [REC]-thefts, up to and especially including its iconic final yank of a frame, which I'll refrain from spoiling here. And yet it's Ángela's push-pull with the camera (as well as her never-seen cameraman Pablo) itself that might be the movie's strongest legacy. Because all the tension of [REC] -- that's not all those bloodthirsty people-eaters they encounter, of course -- is built right into its filming. It's right there in the title. The devolution will be recorded!
Ángela is a Free Speech icon. A lot of found-footage movies don't seem to know how to convince the audience that a person would keep filming while monsters are attacking them, but keeping the camera running is Ángela's raison d'être. She will tell the outside world what is happening them there inside this building dammit, and Velasco plants those seeds of Ángela's serious-mindedness, even against the frivolity of her assigned duty, from frame one. Ángela is as dogged in her pursuit of the sleeping and eating habits of the local fireman in the film's first fifteen minutes as she'll come to be in [REC]'s last act, when those same firemen have developed the nasty habit of ripping out throats.
The climax of [REC] is nigh histrionic, with everyone absolutely screaming their lines at a register not seen since Janeane Garofolo went looking for "The Fucking Phone!!!!" in Wet Hot American Summer. And yet Velasco carries us genuinely to that heightened place through sheer force of skill, making Ángela's quest for truth and for freedom -- the truth about what is happening inside of this building, and the freedom to get the hell out alive -- go hand in hand. We believe in her so hard we want the former for her as much as we want the latter, and we'll ride (or die) with her to the terrible, terrible places to find them both.
