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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
 Posted - 10/18/2009 : 1:21:58 PM
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Finally saw the original [REC]. Total flat-out awesome horror pic. IMHO right up there with 28 Days Later as the best of the modern "zombie" pics. (Yeah, yeah, I know, they're infected, gimme a break here.)
And Manuela Velasco was terrific in the lead. If she's not a star in her native country, she ought to be.
One question though, about the climax. For anyone who's seen it, can you explain...
(SPOILER ALERT)
... the scene in the penthouse? Angela and her cameraman discover all this contradictory evidence, most of it seeming to point to the girl with "tonsilitis" (even on this point I'm not sure if it was supposed to be the same girl or not). On one hand there's all this information about viral experimentation (or not). On the other, there's all this reference to exorcisms (or not). I take it the filmmakers wanted to leave some mystery as to the origin of the infection, but there's a difference between mystified and flat-out confused. (I'm the latter.) Based on what scattered information we're provided in the film, could someone outline what the possibly backstory for this movie was supposed to be?) |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 10/18/2009 : 2:36:01 PM
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[SPOILERS, NATURALLY)
I think the idea behind the whole ending is to reveal that what we've thought so far to be a situation of contagium is actually a very different thing. The documentation in the attic and the girl with "tonsilitis" (LOL, BTW) hint that the whole thing started with an individual case of demonic possession. The situation was, in theory, contained, but for some reason the containment failed at some point and the rest of the tennants became "infected". I can't exactly remember, but I think there were a few hints here and there about how this could have happened.
[END SPOILERS]
I'm glad you enjoyed the film, it's one of the few that have made me feel really proud of my country's film industry. It's difficult to draw the attention of regular cinemagoers without a big budget*, and too often our filmmakers surrender and take the safest route, usually in the shape of low brow comedies or boring melodramas.
BTW, [REC 2] opened in theatres a few weeks ago. It's by no means as good as the first film, but a worthy companion nevertheless. One of the things it does right is to expand / answer some of the issues left open by the first film. You'll also be happy to know Manuela Velasco reprises her role as Angela. That's hardly an spoiler, because her name is featured prominently in the credits. She's not an star yet, she has done mostly TV work after her breakthrough with the first film, but I agree she definitely deserves stardom. Her acting was one of the pillars of the first [REC], and without her the film wouldn't have been half as effective. Funny thing, she was picked for the role because a) she wasn't a known face and b) she has a background as TV host.
* [REC 2] costed around 8 million dollars, and the first film probably even less. |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 10/18/2009 : 3:15:06 PM
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(SPOILERS, part two)
So what happened exactly, the girl was possessed, the doctors mistakenly thought they could treat her using conventional medical therapy, then something went wrong?
Also, how can Manuela Velasco possibly be back when the first film made it appear she bought the farm first time around?
(END SPOILER)
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 10/18/2009 : 4:18:34 PM
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1) No doctors were involved, AFAIK. The tennant in the attic seems to have been linked to the Vatican. He probably was trying to find a cure for the girl using a combination of both science and religion, but he failed.
2) I won't tell you how or why Manuela Velasco is in the sequel. You'll find out sooner or later.
BTW, the US remake of REC, Quarantine, is expected to have a sequel as well, albeit an entirely original one. So they may have Jennifer Carpenter back or not, who knows. |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2009 : 1:38:42 PM
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(SPOILERS, SPOILERS, WE GOT SPOILERS)
So maybe (referencing only what happened in the first film), the girl had previously been hospitalized (IIRC Angela discovers a newspaper article in the penthouse stating a girl patient receiving treatment had recently disappeared.)
The Vatican guy (or as I refer to him, the Edgar Winter guy) was convinced the girl was possessed, so he kidnapped her and brought her to the apartment... but wait a minute... if the girl only turned violent that night while the camera was rolling, and exhibited no prior signs of illness except for a burning temperature, why would the Vatican guy think she was possessed in the first place?
Grr... guess I'm going to have to wait for [REC2] to sort some of this out. And judging from how long it took them to release the first film here, I'm guessing that's gonna be a while.
(END SPOILERS)
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2009 : 4:01:12 PM
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| I think you got some stuff mixed up. The newspaper cuts in the attic walls state that the Medeiros kid was recognised as being genuinely possesed by the Vatian, and that she was eventually put into the hands of the penthouse tennant, who was either a priest, a scientist or both. And the recording Angela and the camera play (IIRC) states that the tennant managed to isolate the physical cause of the possession, but only to find it was highly contagious. |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2009 : 8:41:37 PM
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Very last question on this point... I promise... when you say the Medeiros kid, who do you mean, the tonsilitis girl or the kid in the attic?
Anyway, rather than get sidetracked on that, I'd just like to make one more observation about the film. What I liked most about Angela, aside from Manuela Velasco's fine performance itself, was the special care the filmmakers took with creating her character.
In most horror movies, if there's a reporter, male or female, they usually conform to some cold-blooded, manipulative, ratings-obsessed stereotype (example: Gale Weathers in the Scream pics). But in this film's case, the filmmakers managed to toe a very delicate line. Angela maybe isn't quite the girl-next-door, and she's no shrinking daisy, but she doesn't exactly rhyme with itch either. Yeah, okay, so maybe sometimes her smile for the camera is a little tacked-on, her "friendly" rapport with her interviewees a shade too plastic at times(ex: the fire department scenes). And, no, I'd never want to get between her and her camera and a good story.
On the other hand... I never disliked her. She had her flaws, but she came across (to me, anyway) as a decent, normal person, warts and all... just like the rest of us. Velasco deserves props for this up to a point, but the filmmakers also deserve credit for giving her the wiggle room in the first place.
Case in point: several times when Pablo risked his life to get extra footage, it often was Angela (of all people) warning him back: "No, don't! Pablo, get back here!" Whereas the traditional Gale Weathers-type would have been screaming at her cameraman, "Pablo, get back in there, you coward, or you're fired! Eat your heart out, channel seventeen! Nobody else has this exclusive but us! Hello, new anchor job, here I come!")
Also note that when the infected were rampaging downstairs and all the uninfected tenants were running upstairs, saving only themselves, Angela was the sole voice pleading for someone to handcuff the poor mother left behind, even though the mother had already been bitten and was potentially a threat herself. It's subtle touches like this that make a character seem more spontaneous and therefore more interesting.
The problem with Hollywood too often is that they make the characters from a cookie-cutter: the saint, the scoundrel, the fraidy cat. The downside to this approach is that unless the screenplay is in the hands of an absolutely brilliant writer (rare, these days), the results will be ultimately prove predictable. Who's gonna rescue the girl tied to the train tracks, the guy in the white hat or the guy in the black hat? Duh!!! But if our protagonist is wearing a grey hat, what's he going to do? Well, we won't know until he does it, will we?
Some people, usually snooty critics, argue that good characterization isn't necessary to a genre film. I would argue that characterization is actually more essential to a sci-fi or horror film because when the story is outlandish and make believe, it's good, believable characters that help draw an audience in. [REC] simply wouldn't have worked with unsympathetic cartoon cutouts as characters. And I certainly wouldn't have wasted this much space talking about it if it had. :) |
Edited by - zombiewhacker on 10/19/2009 8:43:55 PM |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 10/20/2009 : 04:52:02 AM
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The Medeiros kid is the overgrown woman at the end, yes.
And I agree that Angela's character is much better drawn than it should be in a horror film. I see that as a result of the pseudo-documentary vs. survival horror vibe that runs deep into the film. And some good, subtle writing doesn't hurt, either. Some Spanish critics hated the prologue at the fire station or the bits where Angela interviews the tennants, believing them just filler, but in them we can see plenty of interesting stuff, from Angela being a bit of a bitch if the job requires it (when she tells the camera to stop recording if an interview runs too long), the guys loving the idea of a hot reporter going with them (that fireman who agrees to switch on the siren just because Angela asks to) or the barely concealed racism of many of the tennants, some of them inmigrants as well. |
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