[Rec]: Discussion

Chelle:  Well Rob has forced quite a few horror movies on me in the last 18 years, but "WOW"!  We watched it with all the lights off at Rob's behest and the whole time my conscious mind is going "This movie is so well done."  Meanwhile, my subconscious had apparently fled and hid somewhere under the covers.  The movie had just ended and Rob had jumped up to turn on a light when Aidan came out of his room for one of his variant reasons.  It wasn't until I got up off the couch to tuck Aidan back in that I realized how the movie had affected me physically.  Yep, physically.  I could feel the blood throbbing in my head and my limbs were shaking with adrenalin.  This is why I say "WOW", 'cause I wasn't even aware of how tense I'd become.  This movie scared me; it really, physically scared me. 

During the final scene, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rob pull the afgan he was under up to his mouth in dreadful anticipation (he knew what was coming and was still scared), but I didn't have time to consider why before I was whispering "What in the hell was that?"  I still have that first glimpse of the "creature" playing in my head and marveling at it.  A humanoid (this is the only word for it) silhouette that is way too tall, way too skinny, and dangling backwards like it was hanging on unseen lines from celing.  But suddenly it straightened up from that awful contortion and began to move toward our doomed heroes.  I now know exactly how most of H.P. Lovecraft's characters feel when they are finally confronted with the dreadful countenance of their own particular tale.  I too, ended up pulling my blanket up to my eyeballs.

I had to watch the making-of feature just to see who could pull that performance off.  The "creature" is actually just a guy (who is way too tall and way too skinny) covered in prosthetics, but even in broad daylight he looked terrifying.  I can understand why they brought their lead in to see him before the shoot; they literally might have scared her to death if they'd just sprung that "creature" on her.

I also really like the "explaination" of what is afflicting the people who live in that Barcelona apartment building.  The Vatican is obviously involved so it's demonic, yet on a tape a mysterious character (who one might be able to blame for everyone's death, due to miscalculation) is heard to be said "I think I have finally isolated the enzyme", so it's scientific too; a disease.  You're left wondering which it is.  This mysterious guy's penthouse is a squalor of newspaper articles about possessed little girls, filthy labratory and operating equipment as well as oversized Roman Catholic paraphernalia.  And all of it is viewed in a POV perspective that is narrowed down by absolute darkness; the only light a weak camera bulb.

I was impressed and truly horrified.  Hats off to Jaume Balagureo and Paco Plaza.


Rob:
Well that screening went about 100x better than expected.  I thought Chelle would like it, but I didn't expect we'd stay up an extra hour wide-awake with adrenaline, discussing what we'd just experienced. You can imagine my pride when Chelle told me it was the scariest horror movie she'd ever seen.  The film holds up surprisingly well on the second viewing. The first time around, the ending caught me completely off guard, which added to the shock value, but this time, the anticipation of what I knew was coming was almost worse.  I had really been looking forward to seeing Chelle's expression when the creature was revealing, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot to look.  I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen.  When we finally did get to bed and I insisted that the lamp stay on, Chelle was like, "I wasn't going to turn it off, not tonight."  This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we watch horror films.