In The Night, In The Dark

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A lot will probably be written (a lot already has) about how Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's [Rec] 2 follows the Alien-to-Aliens through-line of amping up a sequel by throwing a bunch of military men with giant guns into the same scenario that comparatively regular folk were confronted with the first time around. The sequel to The Descent, also out in Europe this Winter, appears to have taken the same page from the playbook. I think you could argue that 28 Weeks Later did the same within that franchise too, although the Army was a big part of the first film there. Still, you make everything louder, and bigger, and fill in some of the holes you didn't get around to the first time around. It's reminiscent of what Randy had to say in Scream 2 about slasher sequels:

"There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate - more blood, more gore - carnage candy."

The original [Rec] had plenty of "carnage candy" to be sure, but it had a genuine sense of mounting terror too (my brief original reaction here). A horrible unknown that closed in on the proceedings - the rooms seemed to get smaller and smaller, the air seeping out of the quarantined apartment complex as the night wore on and the characters were forced up, up, up to the unknown doom wandering inside of the attic, all spider-long limbs and green glowing eyes.

There in that monstrous attic the film hinted at other things, a story behind the proceedings that might've explained, or gone towards explaining, some of what was going on. But then the blackness came, we slipped through into the sickly eye of the nightvision camera, and the monster was upon us. No answers for us, just fingers wrapped around our ankles, a red skid-mark across the floor.

So along with the marching feet of the big-men-with-big-guns, [Rec] 2 is poised to bring us answers, and answers it does. In a couple of spare scenes placed even more sparingly between the escalating rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire and the reborn maniacs smashed and mashed into-pulp (one of the finest bits of attention to detail is how the characters here in the second film are literally slipping and sliding in hallways soaked with blood from what went down in the first film)... well in between all those big-time action scenes [Rec] 2 swiftly and succinctly lays out some of the story, and... what's this? It's entirely satisfying? You don't say?

Yes, in a novel twist, Balagueró and Plaza actually appeared to have a real something up their sleeve for a second film. Something that builds genuinely off of those few hints given at the end of the first film and then turns into something all their own, in turn building the horrors of the first film into something bigger and stranger themselves, and then, just around the time I thought they'd exhausted where they could take it... a new twist.

Let me step back for a moment here: I'm obviously being vague with the details I'm willing to cough up. In other reviews I've read of this film I've seen plenty of its secrets given away so I know they're out there and any of you bothering to read this might very well know what I speak of. You're the ones curious enough to have already gotten these details probably, so I'm not sure why I'm being vague... I just feel the need to. Fill in the blanks with what you know, if you know; if you don't, wait to see the film yourself. It's worth stepping into with some degree of naivete; all the better for the rabid beasts to nip at your heels as you play catch-up.

Secondly, I need to step back from the praise I was giving there because it was escalating a little beyond what I intend. There is something that is necessarily lost from the first film to the second film. That sense of an unknown that I praised in the first film - while they manage to move the series to the next level with terrific ideas, both in the writing and the visual execution (and the sound! the sound is amazing in this film), but that basic small scale that was so vital to the first [Rec] is unavoidably kinda lost in the process. They find magnificent things and ways with which to enrich their story, but it doesn't especially manage to tap into that primal, "I am trapped in a dark room witha thing I have no idea what it is, or could possibly even be," that the first film got.

Except for one series of scenes towards the end. One of the new tricks they have up their sleeve took me there again, and no way am I gonna spoil that.

So all in all, a very successful continuation from the first film. It expands the ideas into some creepy and unexpected ways, it's filled with horrible monsters popping out of dark corridors, it's claustrophobic and violent and terrifying, not to mention spectacularly filmed (how they manage to capture some of the images they capture - the play of color in the blackness, the harshness of the different grains of video - and the astonishing use of sound... a terrific achievement, and definitely one to seek out when one can.

And as Dread Central is reporting, at the Q&A with co-director Jaume Balagueró that followed the screening I was at he admitted that while he and Plaza haven't actually gotten around to planning it yet (he's doing another movie first), they will presumably be making a third film in the series. Although he was much less assured about it than DC is hyping him to be.
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