It’s been a long road for the [REC] series. The first two movies were set in a creepy apartment building in Barcelona which was apparently the site of some very Anti-Zombie experimentation by certain parties (avoiding spoilers, but it’s not Umbrella). The third movie, which the ZRC saw on the big screen, shifted locations to a wedding and ditched the found footage format of the first two movies, courting controversy and, in the humble opinion of your ZRC reviewers, losing most of the cinematic appeal of the first two films while lamentably not improving any in its depiction of Living-Zombie relations.

Tragic. And the critical response was not great either.

REC 4 therefore attempts to return to its roots, featuring once-again ‘imperiled’ reporter Angela Vidal, this time trapped on a quarantine ship at sea, once again supposedly menaced by the apparent Zombie Apocalypse.

It’s supposedly the last installment in the franchise, but such predictions are often premature, so take that with a grain of salt.

As for the film itself? Hmm. Well.

It’s profoundly Anti-Zombie, as one might expect, and tries to take the fear of the Undead in some new directions, such as fear of Zombie foodservice workers, for example. Hardly laudable behavior. [REC] 4 also represents an entry in the ‘Fear Zombies at Sea’ genre, which Resident Evil has also dipped its corrupt virtual toes into with ‘Resident Evil: Revelations‘.

Overall though, [REC] 4 represents more of the same, but muddled. It lacks the focus and unusual religiosity of the first two films, the big budget and occasionally action-movie focus of the third movie, and generally, the suspense of any of the previous films. Characters die off-screen, plot threads are picked up, abandoned, sometimes picked up only to be abandoned again. It takes a long time to even get to any Zombies, which is both a blessing and a curse for your ZRC reviewer.

Honestly, I have no idea why it is rated as highly as it is on Rotten Tomatoes.

The ZRC gives [REC] 4 our lowest score for Zombie Rights and declares it ‘Living Supremacist’. We also declare it pretty boring and easily skipped.

Tags: ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, July 13th, 2015 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.