¡Qué horror! 2012

Candidate # 27

[REC]³ GÉNESIS

(March 2012)

  

While I’ve long been a self-avowed Jaume Balagueró slut, I’ve never been too keen on Paco Plaza’s Romasanta, so I really went in to the original [REC] on the strength of Balagueró’s past work.

Thus, when word first broke that Filmax would be wrapping up the [REC] saga with two films, I greeted the news with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’d be getting double the action. But that realization was offset by the fact that the [REC] co-directors were splitting up, so Plaza would handle the third installment, Génesis, and Balagueró would take on the fourth and final chapter, Apocalypse; I was stoked to see that Balagueró would close the saga, but to get there, we’d have to cross Plaza’s Génesis first…

So I held my breath, hoped for the best.

And what do you know? I enjoyed this a hell of a lot better than Romasanta.

Imago Mortis’ Leticia Dolera and Diego Martín are Clara and Koldo, a young couple whose wedding reception becomes the scene of a full-on bloodbath, as one of the guests happens to have a connection to events that played offscreen in the original [REC].

Now, though not as somber and nerve-wrackingly straight-faced as the first two [REC] films, and foregoing the shakycam found footage approach at a certain point of its running time, Génesis is still a good entry, not just in the [REC] saga, but also in the annals of zombie cinema. (And yes, I know they’re not “zombies” per se, but this saga is nonetheless firmly ensconced in that section of horror cinema.)

Though I will go on the record as saying I still think the first two [REC] films are significantly better, Génesis still packs a potent emotional gutpunch, and has some stand-out moments of onscreen goreletting that shouldn’t disappoint.

And with that out of the way…

Onto Apocalypse…

([REC]³ Génesis OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

QUARANTINE
(Review)


Being the Jaume Balaguero slut that I am, I really tried my darnedest to see [REC] when it was first unleashed, but that just didn’t happen. Then, I told myself that I’d see [REC] first before I would ever be unfaithful and lay eyes on its English-language remake, Quarantine.
Yeah.
That didn’t happen either.
And finally, it came about that I simply couldn’t keep putting off Quarantine in favour of its progenitor any longer, so, here I am, with my thoughts on Quarantine.


This very nearly breathless exercise in first-person, handheld POV horror sees Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott Percival (The Practice’s Steve Harris) doing a piece for The Night Shift, where Angela gets to live her dream for a night—being a fireman.
Well, actually just shadowing a crew of firefighters, first in the station, during their downtime, and later on, when they’re called in for what turns out to be a medical emergency with horrifying ramifications, gradually turning her dream, yes, you guessed it, into a nightmare…


Under the very able and deft direction of John Erick Dowdle (assisted by his brother Drew, who’ve made the example of the Coen brothers their own career template), the palpable tension of a collection of people trapped in a building under very intense conditions is only too evident, as events spiral out of control and hysteria steadily escalates into maddening terror.
And while this is a piece of ensemble horror, credit needs to go to Carpenter, who should be familiar to you from Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose, as well as Showtime’s Dexter. As Angela, she’s practically onscreen for the entire length of the film, and is the audience’s “in” to the chiller’s narrative, the gamut of emotions she runs—excitement to anger to indignation to anxiety to balls-out shivering hysteria—mirrors our own, as things rapidly go from bad to oh-so-very-frakking-worse.


Though this doesn’t have the Cloverfield advantage of a cast of relative unknowns (thus heightening the suspension of disbelief), we do get Johnathon Schaech as the 70’s porn-mustachioed fireman Fletch.
And that’s a pretty fair trade-off, I think.
It’s also a credit to everyone involved with Quarantine (including DP Ken Sang and editor Elliot Greenberg, for making the cinematic sleights of hand invisible) that the film’s scares outshine that mustache, ‘cause it truly is a scarifying one, people.
There’s also a very neat Doug Jones appearance in here; trust me, you’ll know Dougie when you see him…


It’s interesting to note that the Dowdles co-wrote the Quarantine script working off [REC]’s Spanish script, since the adaptation began while [REC] was still being completed.
It was in the same week that they completed and presented their Quarantine script that they first saw [REC], and though it did then inform the subsequent development and shooting of Quarantine, this didn’t tread the usual path most remakes take.
And now that Quarantine has proven to be a very effective film in its own right*, it only makes me even more eager, to see both the original [REC], and its impending sequel, [REC] 2, which is said to give the material an Aliens spin, as camera-mounted military types enter the picture to clean up the bloody mess.
Woo-hoo! Fun times!!


* It’s a testament to the achievements of the Dowdle brothers—whose tag-team work on The Poughkeepsie Tapes got them the Quarantine gig—that they were handpicked by M. Night Shyamalan to kick off the “Night Chronicles” with Devil.
The Night Chronicles will encompass three horror films that will find their genesis in original stories by Shyamalan, to be scripted and directed by individuals chosen by him as well.
Devil is to be scripted by Brian Nelson, who’s worked with director David Slade twice, helping to adapt 30 Days of Night for the big screen, and before that, on Hard Candy.


Parting shot: Incidentally, Quarantine—and of course, [REC]—plays like an early Cronenberg mash-up, taking the setting, an apartment building, from one of his films which I haven’t seen (Shivers), and releasing the threat from one of his films which I have seen, and which is reviewed here at the Iguana.
Other films’ reviews accessible in the Archive are shakycam POV horror titles that followed in [REC]’s wake, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield and George Romero’s Diary of the Dead; Jaume Balaguero’s features Los sin nombre, Darkness, and Frágiles; as well as films featuring Jones (Guillermo del Toro’s El laberinto del fauno and Hellboy II: The Golden Army) and Schaech (Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation).
Schaech’s work on cable TV’s Masters of Horror is also tackled in the Archive.

(Quarantine Spanish OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

THE ABANDONED
(Review)

Nacho Cerda’s The Abandoned is the third After Dark Horrorfest film I’ve seen (the others, Takashi Shimizu’s Rinne and J.S. Cardone’s Wicked Little Things; review in Archive: March 2007), and it’s the best one so far.

We open in Russia, in 1966, where two infants are found in a truck with a dead woman at the wheel.
Flash forward four decades later, and Marie (Anastasia Hille, seen in Po-Chih Leong’s excellent The Wisdom of Crocodiles and Nick Hamm’s The Hole), an American film producer, is contacted by a Mr. Misharin (Valentin Ganev), a solicitor who tells her that she has come into the ownership of a farm in Russia. As it turns out, Marie is adopted, and the farm belonged to her birth mother, who apparently died shortly after she was born.
No sooner does Marie arrive at the isolated farm (completely surrounded by a river; and she can’t swim!), when strange phenomena begin to take place, including Marie seeing her doppelganger, soaking wet, eyes rolled up to their whites.
Shortly thereafter, she meets Nicolai (Karel Roden, recognizable to genre fans from Guillermo Del Toro films Blade II and Hellboy, as well as Paul Hunter’s Bullet-Proof Monk), who may have a connection with Marie, and who is also seeing his own doppelganger, bearing the bloody wounds of what seems to have been an animal attack.
And as the doppelganger sightings become more frequent and violent, neither Marie nor Nicolai can seem to leave the farm…

It’s an interesting premise Cerda brings to our door in The Abandoned. Utilizing a key horror element familiar to fans of the genre (the decrepit house out in the middle of nowhere), Cerda introduces the mystery of the doppelgangers and as a result, gives us a film that actually feels original.
At any rate, it’s certainly not cut from the cloth (sometimes all-too-wearing-thin these days) of the average modern-day horror film, with the long-haired spectre of Asian horror cinema casting its deep shadow over the ghostly proceedings.
Cerda does not even depend on the usual scare tactics of the sudden tandem shock of movement, music, and sound, to get to his audience. (No jumping, yowling cats here.)
Instead, it’s all about the situation and the predicament, with an almost constant sonic layer of voices and whispers, as Marie and Nicolai try to solve the mystery of the farm and their ghastly counterparts.

From Filmax, the production company responsible for much of the excellent non-Asian, non-Hollywood horror films in the recent past (most notably the films of Jaume Balaguero), The Abandoned is largely effective and has an interesting (if downbeat) pay-off. It’s only perhaps in the maintenance of the tension that the film suffers somewhat. The Abandoned isn’t as taut as it might have been, and whether or not you ultimately enjoy this film will be based largely on your patience and ability to lose yourself in a movie.

Having said that, the film does boast Xavi Gimenez as its cinematographer. Gimenez (go-to cinematographer for Jaume Balaguero) has a great eye and has made films like Balaguero’s Los Sin Nombre and Darkness, and Brad Anderson’s El Maquinista visually arresting cinematic experiences. (Interestingly enough, editor Luis De La Madrid, often paired with Gimenez to brilliant effect, is thanked by Cerda in the end credits.)

Ultimately, if you’re a fan of the horror genre, you owe it to yourself to see The Abandoned, if only because it’s quite unlike the typical horror film of the moment. Whether you’ll like it or not will be based on your personal tastes, but at the very least, you can say you had a bite.

Parting shot: The Abandoned is the only one of the eight After Dark Horrorfest films that actually had a theatrical release in the U.S. (Unlike the others, which, following the Horrorfest, were released straight to DVD.)

Parting shot 2: Cerda directed the documentary The Machinist: Breaking the Rules, found on the El Maquinista DVD.

(The Abandoned OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com.)