REC 2 - demonios!!

I had been looking forward to this. If you'd seen either the original REC or the almost instantaneous american remake Quarantine (which was almost shot for shot identical...which meant (a) it worked almost as well as the original and (b) it was as pointless as a tampon in a men's prison) you know what's on offer here. Epileptic handheld camerawork, people screaming and zombies running amok. It was fast, smart, scary and pretty bloody with a high body count. The sequel continues mere seconds after the first film ends with a team of heavily-armed SWAT members accessing the f**ked building along with a government official on some vague rescue/recon mission.

The build-up would seem to suggest machinegun-filled carnage( The head, shoot em in the head!)  but if you are imagining a 90 minute live-action version of Left4Dead that's not gonna happen. For the first 30 minutes, the sequence following the SWAT team does seem to suggest that direction....viewed through interchanging video feeds on their helmets, it's quite reminiscent of "Aliens" . The FPS-style SWAT vs "infected" scenes are quite cool but there's not a lot of that. The movie stumbles a bit when a bunch of expendable and irritating teenagers are introduced, in fairness they are probably needed just to boost the bodycount a bit. Compared to the first REC it's also got a lot more unnecessary exposition and background...

There's no weird space virus or military experiment gone tits-up here, the infection is demonic in nature...something only hinted at in the first movie. Satan, that s**t, he's at it again! Strangely, at the very end the movie shifts again and drops in a totally f**king unnecessary scene reminiscent of excellent and criminally underrated 80's sci-fi The Hidden. So there you are, it's exactly the same as the first except it has demonic possession, hidden dimensions, exorcisms and sci-fi parasitic body horror. Er. It still could be fairly accurately described as a load of screaming spanish people running up and down some stairs for an hour and a half. Still recommended as an action/horror hybrid, it's just not as good as the first. Clear indications of another sequel, but no more shaky handicams por favor. Muy bien.