‘Rec 4: Apocalypse’ at 10: A Good Movie With A Bad Finale
Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC] is one of the scariest movies of all time. As a precursor to the more frenzied, action-oriented found footage horrors that would define the 2010s, [REC] subverted expectations with stylized violence, claustrophobic tension, and economic, genre-defining scares. Naturally, several sequels followed. Balagueró and Plaza returned for Rec 2, a bigger (debatably scarier) iteration of the first. Structurally parallel, Rec 2 instead endeavored to expand upon the series mythology, par for the course with franchise filmmaking. Plaza would helm the third entry, Rec 3: Genesis, on his own, controversially shifting the series away from its found-footage roots for a more traditional horror filmmaking style. Balagueró would then helm the series capstone, Rec 4: Apocalypse, released 10 years ago on Halloween.
The series is distinct, not the least of which because of its cultural cache in the United States. Foreign horror had grown more popular at the time—[REC] even got a pretty decent remake with Quarantine—though it was still remarkable to see a Spanish-language zombie movie break through the transnational mold and captivate international audiences. Rec, truly, was a sensation, though fans were reasonably skeptical to hear a deliberately contained slice of horror perfection was not just getting a sequel, but three subsequent entries. Among them, Rec 4: Apocalypse is widely considered the worst, especially when viewed from a contemporary lens.
I began this retrospective anticipating something different. I’d planned to argue how Rec 4: Apocalypse deserves to be elevated in the canon of Rec films, what with its myriad answers to longstanding franchise questions and its brazen merging of religious iconography and conventional zombie parasites. Instead, my franchise ranking remained steadfastly chronological. The Rec films simply got worse as they went on. Yet, on its anniversary, Rec 4: Apocalypse is far from the disaster I once thought it was. While it remains a deeply unsatisfying franchise conclusion, sequestered from those expectations it’s a pretty gnarly, pretty scary zombie movie.
For context, I actively celebrated Rec 3: Genesis’ filmmaking twist. I was certainly incredulous at first, questioning whether the style would ditch found footage in absolute terms, though I was quick to get on board. Rec 3: Genesis rivals Warm Bodies as possibly the most romantic zombie movie of all time, and Plaza, three films deep, only got better at staging undead carnage. The symbolism was rich, the set pieces staggering in scale and terror, and stars Leticia Dolera and Diego Martín are the series’ best leads, easy to root for, easy to fear for.
Rec 4: Apocalypse, with Plaza and Balagueró playing franchise hot potato, retained the style of Genesis. Found footage was out, a curious choice since, at the time, found footage had taken off. The subgenre was still in its infancy when [REC] was first released, augmented by the success of Paranormal Activity and the proliferation of accessible (and affordable) home video options. Found footage is so tethered to the digital age because immersion simply doesn’t work if audiences don’t buy the veracity of the recordings. For reference, the cheapest camcorder I could find in a 1999 Best Buy ad—I looked it up—was priced at $799.
[REC] was immersive and frenzied. It was infected zombies up close, in your face. Grimy, violent, confrontational cinema. The series’ strengths were so tethered to the style that I understand, even if I disagree, why fans were outraged with Genesis’ shift to traditional filmmaking. More than anything, it felt less like a creative choice, and more like a financial one to make the series more palatable to shifting audience tastes. Of course, it came at the expense of the series’ trademark style. Oh, and Javier Botet’s Tristana Medeiros was reduced to a franchise cameo, an Easter egg for fans of the first two films rather than its central, tragic antagonist. Everything Rec 3 jeopardized, Rec 4: Apocalypse risked even more.
The scale remains on par with what the franchise had seen before, beaten only by the third film’s expansive wedding venue. The back-to-basics approach might have worked as a soft reboot, but Rec 4: Apocalypse was firmly planned as a franchise conclusion, and right off the bat, its nautical setting feels frustratingly inconsequential. The movie is small, all the more so when accounting for how the quarantined research vessel amounts to little more than the same three hallways for most of the movie’s runtime.
However, it helps that Manuela Velasco’s Ángela Vidal returns, even if the movie goes full Halloween: H20 and undoes its most interesting plot twist right away. There’s no risk Ángela is possessed, with the icky, wormy parasite throat-swapping at the movie’s outset. Ángela, at least, remains one of the genre’s most fascinating protagonists, largely because she’s kind of terrible. Ángela is selfish, rash, and realistically incapable of impossible action feats. She just wants to get away from the infected, and I’d be pretty fed up, too, if I was suckered into a third go-round.
As noted before, Rec 4: Apocalypse is a terrible finale. Lore is dumped via clunky exposition, the scale is nonexistent, and the film wraps in a place it could have easily arrived at a dozen other ways. As a standalone zombie movie on the high seas, however, Rec 4: Apocalypse is pretty strong. Balagueró’s action remains as chaotic as ever. The infected here are wet and toothy, spitting and gnawing their way through the ragtag band of survivors. The franchise’s grim humor endures, too, pairing every jolt with a solid, macabre laugh.
Balagueró additionally manages plenty of earnest thrills, including a protracted chase sequence featuring infected monkeys. More broadly, the Rec series undoubtedly has some of the best zombies the genre has seen this century. Rec 4: Apocalypse, now free to stream on Tubi, is worth revisiting. Its ship doesn’t chart a particularly worthwhile course for the franchise as a whole, but with tempered expectations, it’s as strong a [REC] sequel as any. The charm and novelty of the series’ inception might have worn off, but Rec 4 retains the muscular zombie carnage that helped us to fall in love in the first place. In other words, it’s an infection worth catching.
Categorized:Editorials
