Continuing the heavily curtailed Halloween special this year, we take a look at found footage horror with The Blair Witch Project, REC, and REC 2.
Regular readers likely already know my love for The Blair Witch Project.
In my view, it remains one of the two scariest horror movies of all time, along with Ring/u. The two films share much. Released a year apart, they are over 20 years old at this point and spoiled to all hell. They both delivered shattering endings that elevated horror long before anyone thought of that rightly maligned phrase. Slashers had dominated for years, then in quick succession, two movies came along which eschewed all of the established tropes and left many of us shaking, stunned, and absolutely thrilled.
People obsess about spoilers these days, but these are two films where that word really counts. If you’re fortunate enough to be in the clear, so to speak, then it really is worth seeking them out, sticking them on in a darkened room, and judging for yourself. Fear is fun. Really. Read no further, treat yourself to some hard-earned terror. It makes the real world easier to deal with.
What is it about these scares that remain so special? Well to me, in the case of The Blair Witch, it’s the lack of a release. Many horror films follow a pattern. Suspense is built, often according to the principle that Hitchcock famously described: there’s a time bomb under the table, and we the audience know it, but the characters don’t. Substitute a masked killer for the explosive and you have the template for scenes in a thousand slashers. Whatever sub-genre the horror movie lives in, the next moment of the pattern is often a tension breaker… a fake-out that temporarily relieves the audience, encouraging a laugh, or at least relaxation. Then, moments later, the jump scare follows, optionally with gore.
In a lot of cases, we’re so used to this pattern that we relax into it. But The Blair Witch Project kicks that pattern into a muddy creek. The film students begin their investigation, interview local residents about the legends of the Witch and then plunge into the woods to investigate further. The deeper they go, the more uneasy they, and we, become. They find unsettling objects, hear increasingly distressing sounds and gradually come to realise that someone or something is in the woods with them. Unlike Hitchcock’s bomb, we have no idea what’s out there either… we only know what they do and we’re left guessing… imagining. Worse, a lifetime of horror movies has conditioned us to anticipate the release, the jump, the moment when the covers are pulled back to show us the monster… but here, it never comes. We’re left hanging, haunted, and lost. The Witch has us forever, and we exit the cinema into the night, still clutching the ticking bomb in our shaking hands.
These are good reasons why this is one of the most successful and profitable indie movies of all time. But how has it aged?
Well, it’s certainly a victim of its own success. It didn’t create the ‘found footage’ genre, but it exploded it into the mainstream. Anyone viewing it now must do so in the shadow of a thousand weak imitators and vanishingly few great ones, the latter of which have often been made with much greater resources than Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez had when they directed this. Of course, at the time it also masterfully exploited the nascent World Wide Web for its marketing in a way that can never be repeated with equal impact. Even without knowing the ending, it seems unlikely to affect a modern audience the same way it terrorised us back in ‘99.
During our last Halloween special, we watched Ring/u and its American remake back to back. For me, that film has aged better. That scene in Ring/u literally made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up last year, despite the fact I’ve seen it many times – at least as often as I’ve seen Blair Witch, if not more. But, the latter is a smaller film with a smaller scope, so it’s not a fair comparison. And nothing can change the fact that for better or worse, The Blair Witch Project, a film made for $60,000 which came from nowhere, had a far more lasting impact on cinema than Star Wars: The Phantom Menace did a few months earlier. That is pretty damned scary in its own right.
Last year, when I reviewed Train to Busan, I said, “Look, we all know we’ve had way too many zombie movies in recent years, not to mention The Walking Dead TV series and about 58 billion spin-offs. But this? It’s the best one I’ve seen since 28 Days Later. I say that advisedly, having hugely enjoyed things like REC, REC 2 and The Girl with All the Gifts, they’re all excellent films.”
I stand by that, but let’s start by addressing the zombie elephant in the room. I mean, for heaven’s sake, since I wrote the above we’ve had a zombie Prime Minister, and since I’m making cheap political jokes (I know, Quelle surprise) there’s been at least one President in my lifetime that even zombies would refuse to bite, because, even in death, standards. There are zombies in the bloody MCU now and it really doesn’t get any more mainstream than that. The Walking Dead TV show is still going at the time of writing, albeit in the final series, and even I haven’t watched that since Negan lost his bat, so I’m struggling to see who’s staying loyal to it.
There are zombies bloody everywhere. The pop psychology theory is that they represent our fear of rising dementia rates. That sounds logical, albeit rather disrespectful.
Whatever the reason, it’s easy to roll your eyes and switch off if yet another zombie movie, game, TV show or whatever hits the web. But, quite obviously, saturation and over-familiarity do not preclude outstanding quality. Look at superhero movies, westerns, and crime fiction…
REC (as in ‘record’) is a Spanish movie, from 2007, and it’s superb. Why then, do I still prefer the aforementioned Train to Busan and The Girl with All the Gifts? Because, just as we’ve had a glut of zombie flicks, thanks to The Blair Witch we’ve similarly had a glut of ‘found footage’ horror, of which REC is one. As an example of the latter, it stands head and shoulders above most of its competition. Personally, when someone talks about the genre, there are only a few that immediately come to my mind… The Blair Witch Project, obviously, REC, REC 2, plus Paranormal Activity (2007) and the little-seen The Last Broadcast (1998). All of these are genuinely great horror movies and deserve credit. I guess it’s just that where once found footage seemed so original, it became the norm, so as a personal bias, REC suffers a little in comparison to the movies I mentioned, but it’s still brilliant in its own right and highly recommended.
The film follows a TV crew shadowing firefighters for a little-watched late-night documentary strand. They want a big break, particularly the presenter, Ángela. Naturally, they don’t want that break to come courtesy of being quarantined in an apartment block that goes to hell via a horde of the undead. Like so many of the best original movies, it’s a brilliantly simple idea and it’s perfectly executed.
The intensity is second to none, the ferocity of the fast 28 Days Later-style zombies is frightening, and some of the scares are really effective. Plus, REC 2 smuggles in the revelation that these undead are actually suffering from viral demonic possession, so if you squint you can even give it a pass on the zombie overload front.
Both RECs effectively get over the perennial found footage problem of ‘why are they still filming?’ They both have good casting and acting. They both jog along at a good pace and keep you involved, despite establishing decent characters who you care about when the monstrous munching starts.
Plots, understandably, are sparse and tightly focused on action. REC is simply about survival. REC 2 picks up immediately after the first and centres on a SWAT team sent in to support an investigation of the events – and cause – of the prior film. This viewing left me enjoying the sequel less than the first time I saw it. As Mrs GG rightly pointed out, they troubled too much about explaining events; horror is often best left bleak, mysterious, and nihilistic. Still, REC 2 is better than 90% of zombie movies and 98.2% of found footage films.
If nothing else, it’s worth knowing that that monster in these movies isn’t CGI… that’s a real person. He’s six feet, seven inches tall and weighs less than nine stone.
I watched all three of these movies on disc, but they’re widely available on streaming services.
Back soon with some more horror reviews and recommendations!
