[REC]⁴ Apocalypse
Directed by Jaume Balagueró
- thriller
- horror
The story
Ángela Vidal, the young television reporter who entered the building with the firemen, manages to make it out alive. But what the soldiers don't know is that she carries the seed of the strange infection. She is to be taken to a provisional quarantine facility, a high-security installation where she will have to stay in isolation for several days. An old oil tanker, miles off shore and surrounded by water on all sides, has been especially equipped for the quarantine.
What it’s like
Cold, grimy shipboard light and claustrophobic handheld intimacy dominate this fourth entry in the Spanish found-footage horror series, shot in a palette of sickly greens, rust browns and hard fluorescent whites that bleed into the dark corridors of a rolling tanker. Its sound is mostly diegetic: groaning steel, distant sea swell, the shriek of a bulkhead, and a sudden wall of noise when the infection surfaces. The camera stays close and jittery, often pressed against faces, so the ship feels airless and the frame never quite settles. Its vibe is bleak, sea-sick dread with an undertow of religious unease, best suited to a late night alone or a genre binge where you want the tension to keep tightening. Pacing is relentless once the quarantine breaks, with long stretches of watchful silence broken by abrupt, chaotic movement. The emotional register is grim and feverish, centred on a young woman who has to decide how much to trust the people around her as her body and the ship turn against her. The violence is frequent and graphic, with bloody infection, gore and sudden brutal attacks; the scares are loud and physical rather than subtle. It is for horror fans who like escalating, claustrophobic chaos and don't mind a gory, downbeat ending.
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