day 06. movie 06. [REC]³: Genesis
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this movie was fun! i can understand some of the criticisms lobbied against it; but honestly the found-footage thing and the suspension of disbelief in storyline at the end of
[REC]² was getting to be astronomical. i love both the original and the sequel and the
angle that it took over the more typical infection route of the remake and other zombie flicks.
that said, i felt the way they dropped the in-camera footage was very intelligent. with atun the wedding photog and his expensive equipment and adrian the groom's cousin and his consumer camera with "HD and megapixels" exchanging thoughts before the ceremony. it's very obvious the filmmaker intended this to be the passing of the torch from amateur home movies to "cinema quality". i loved the super-late title card.
overall the movie was gorgeous. rich colors, sharp contrast, and just great looking shots and locations. it was almost hyper-real compared to the flashlight-in-the-dark and nightvision aesthetics of the first two films. the wedding reception motif provides for some great moments of people in formal clothes smeared in blood traipsing around a beautiful spanish villa/castle setting.
the use of spanish love-ballads and typical wedding music was a nice touch too; reminiscent of
shaun of the dead maybe (playing ironically happy music over bloody violence) but i felt the movie has enough of it's own identity that this wasn't remotely a problem. like others have said, there is a decidedly more humorous tone to the proceedings than in the previous films, and for me this wasn't a problem either. it's not so slapstick as something like "shaun" and not as jarring or bafflingly inappropriate as something like
the last house on the left.
one downside for me was the real lack of exposition: aside from an otherwise completely throwaway line near the beginning, and the last 5 minutes of the film (which i enjoyed in it's nihilism, despite seeing it from a mile away) you wouldn't know
[REC]³ is even related to the previous two. the problem being that, unless you understand the events of the
[REC] series up to this point,
[REC]³ will make absolutely no sense. it's mostly just 65 minutes of zombie horror with 15 minutes of exposition for the wedding and the characters themselves. the overall storyline of the series is not advanced whatsoever.
the other problem for me was that, as crazily armed (and armored) as some of these characters get, the film is actually pretty light on the zombie fighting action. there's more than enough shots of people being attacked, run down, swarmed, and generally just hunted by the turning horde, but little in the way of the main protagonists actually taking the fight to the monsters. it's basically a lot of people running around scared out of their wits and being picked off until only the three most obviously-going-to-make-it characters are left.
on that note, i liked most of the characters in this film. nobody really stands out, but nobody did a particularly awful job either. i grew to care about the majority of them and the deaths in the movie, for how shallow and underdeveloped some of the characters are, were at the least "bummer" moments if not outright upsetting. i feel like i know a version of almost everyone in this movie. they and the movie's events are relatable on a very base level.
overall very enjoyable, very fun, and i look forward to
[REC]⁴.
[REC]³: Genesis - 8/10 (one point goes entirely to the gorgeous leticia dolera)
good for gorgeous cinematography, decent jump scares, likeable characters and classic zombie horror tropes; bad for plot development, lack of any real substantial combat/action scenes
GIFs!
