Do you know that Idea “camera in hand and no actors on screen”? After the reality shows on TV they invented the “reality cinema”. The first one I saw was in the early 90s, a Belgian film kind of dark called “Man Bites Dog”, which shows a team filming a professional assassin. Years later Hollywood copied the idea and made “Blair Witch” and still tried to sell the story as if it were true ! And this year “Cloverfield” was released, taking the idea of a pro catastrophic film; besides “Diary of the Dead”. Excellent film by George Romero.

Well, like the master Tarantino has taught us, a good idea could be reused as long as there is talent behind the cameras. And we can say that the directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza did a good job. A fantastic Spanish movie isn’t new anymore, see it by the recent movies “The Orphanage” and “Pans Labrinth”. “Rec” can join the club!

(However, the name Jaume Balaguero isn’t totally unknown around here, he directed “Darkness”, with Anna Paquim , a film that although it looks like Hollywood made, is Spanish)

Angela is a TV reporter of a night show that will accompany the night shift of a firefighters team. With a camera and two firemen, she goes to a small building to see an emergency – they get locked inside with two policemen and some of the neighbors.

The characters don’t know what is happening and we don’t either. We find things out little by little and through the TV cam we can’t see everything that happens.
The situation lived by the characters is claustrophobic and hopeless, there is danger next to them and no one knows what it is. Angela and her camera, imbued by her journalistic spirit, films everything so they can show later what is happening.

Strongly recommended. The film is from 2007 but it was only launched in the Brazilian circuit recently. Maybe because the American remake “Quarantine” which is already finished…