Anybody following Horror Press for the past year knows how much I love the V/H/S films (more on V/H/S/94 here, and V/H/S/99 here!). But if there’s one found footage series I care for even more than V/H/S; it’s REC.

What Is the REC Horror Series?

For the uninitiated, REC is a foreign series of horror films following the outbreak of a viral infection in a quarantined apartment in the heart of Spain, and its eventual spread outward. Written and directed by Jaume Balagueró, it begins with the tale of late-night news reporter Angela Vidal whose spotlight on Barcelona firefighters is interrupted during a routine call. After local authorities seal off the building due to a resident’s dog infecting an entire kennel with an unidentifiable contagion, all hell breaks loose as the people inside one by one succumb to the disease.

If you haven’t seen the film, spoilers ahead.

REC’s Unique Twist on Zombie and Possession Horror

A Demonic Virus Unleashed

As Angela finds herself inadvertently investigating the virus transmitted through violent maulings from feral, zombie-like victims, she finds out the penthouse of the apartment is host to a demonically possessed little girl, whose body has been warped by the part-disease, part-demon entity inside of her (portrayed by none other than now legendary creature actor Javier Botet in his first big breakout role).

Surprise, all the undead are also possessed!

Creative Horror Elements in REC

Besides being a neat twist on both possession and zombie films, Balagueró utilizes it in several fun ways; for one, all the undead look like their progenitor in mirrors, showing off that intrinsic demonic link. The most memorable of these details is a scene in REC 3 where the hordes of undead are unexpectedly paralyzed by a priest reciting a prayer over an intercom system, which blew my mind when I saw it for how clever it was. That’s not even counting the grotesque effects, like how La Niña Medeiros passes the main demon onto Angela. And as is to be expected, a few homages to The Exorcist & Evil Dead are scattered throughout for eagle-eyed viewers.

The Evolution of the REC Series

REC 3: Genesis – A Bloody, Fun Departure

As the series continued, its sense of escalation was best compared to the Resident Evil video games. If RECand REC 2 are the straight-laced and dire counterparts of the first two games, the closest comparison for REC 3: Genesis would be Resident Evil 4: it’s a roller coaster of bloody fun that mostly shirks off the found footage element as writer Paco Plaza takes the directing helm. Do you want a bootleg Spongebob evading demons or a chainsaw-wielding, blood-spattered bride? You watch REC 3.

Eat your heart out, Grace le Domas.

REC 4: Apocalypse – A Gory Finale

That film has little to do with the main storyline, but don’t worry: REC 4: Apocalypse is an excellent send-off for Angela and ramps up the stakes appropriately with explosions of blood so big they needed heavy-duty tarps on set, though this abandons the found footage aesthetic (it also takes place on a boat, which I guess makes it Resident Evil: Revelations?). It’s even more impressive how well it turned out with the technical constraints that Balaguero said made it a “nightmare” to shoot. The point is, you can pick any as your favorite, and I’ll understand why for any answer you give.

Why REC Deserves More Recognition

I never gave a fair shake to Balagueró’s magnum opus of viral demonic possession until I was older, always putting off watching the movies in high school since I made the fatal mistake many American horror fans do: I watched the terrible American remake, Quarantine, first. Not only did I miss out on possibly the best-found footage of the decade, but I also missed an essential piece of horror history.

Because the truth is, the genre owes way more to REC than just a few fun movies.

The Found Footage Dark Ages Before REC

The Post-Blair Witch Slump

Before REC there was…Not a whole lot worth talking about. At least in the years following the big dog of the genre, The Blair Witch Project. When it came to found footage post-1999, the name of the game was Blair Witch…until it wasn’t.

Subtlety flew out the window when studios realized that, from a profit perspective, Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez’s little masterpiece was a loud and resounding Civil War-era cannon that broke after firing once, not the money-printing machine gun they anticipated. You couldn’t replicate the cultural zeitgeist and perfect storm of events that made Blair Witch popular, but you could harvest some very base gimmicks. Looking at the found footage genre during the gap between Blair Witch 2 and the REC films, you’ll notice that the films popping up are all bland at best and hot messes at worst.

The Era of Disturbing Found Footage Flops

Yes, you have your “Blatant Blair Witch Rip-offs” with titles like The Dark Area and Blackwood Evil that recycle carbon copy plots. But more importantly, you have what eventually became the genre of detritus that is “Disturbing Found Footage Horror Movies” (see The Poughkeepsie Tapes, August Underground), trash solely existing to be on a listicle with other grotesque films that are the cinematic equivalent of a twelve-year-old boy saying slurs in an Xbox lobby.

The latter had the most impact, inspiring a wave of lukewarm, lurid pseudo-true-crime slop that struggles for verisimilitude, attempting to disgust the audience first and make a movie second. Being reminded what you’re watching is “ABSOLUTELY REAL AND TRUE FOOTAGE” never ends up helping the enjoyability of that fare. In fact, it made for what I’d consider the Dark Ages of Found Footage.

Rare Gems in the Found Footage Void

There is admittedly some good among all this bad: hits like Japan’s Noroi were made, finally getting its due in some online circles for being a genuinely terrifying film. There’s also the endlessly entertaining Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which took on the genre and made a one-of-a-kind horror mockumentary. But for every one of these, there were five forgettable flops.

Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza capitalized on the lack of truly thrilling found footage movies being made and squeezed a $2 million micro-budget to give back a sixteen-fold return on investment of $32.5 million. That cemented REC’s success and Balagueró cemented his movies as the pattern for great found footage on a commercial level.

REC’s Innovative Cinematography and Realism

REC’s carefully planned cinematography to simulate isolation tapped into that great fear found-footage’s realism can draw out, something that few others but The Blair Witch Project have successfully sold. Being shot entirely in real-time is a major element of what makes the film so tense to watch, along with little tricks like giving the actors incomplete scripts to force them to draw out more genuine reactions.

REC’s Influence on Modern Horror

The Ripple Effect of REC’s Success

Audiences responded, and after Quarantine replicated the success with a higher budget (though more modest returns), studios had to take note of how lucrative the genre could be. A pet theory of mine is that it was one of the REC series’ early contemporaries, Paranormal Activity, which was in the right place and time to run with that popularity and take theatres by storm.

Did REC Pave the Way for Paranormal Activity?

Not to discredit Oren Peli’s iconic movie; there’s a reason Paranormal Activity garnered much more widespread acclaim and supersaturated the market with found footage imitators. But I would go so far as to argue that most of the Paranormal Activity films probably wouldn’t exist were it not for the success of REC as a commercial release. Though Paranormal Activity hit the film festival circuit a month before the latter’s release, REC’s commercial success would have had a stronger reverberation. There’s a high likelihood this probably seeped into producer influence going forward.

Including the eyes of horror mogul Jason Blum.

Creator of Blumhouse.

You see where I’m going with this.

REC’s Legacy in the 2010s Found Footage Boom

Is it so hard to believe? That REC’s success begat Paranormal Activity being acquired by Paramount Pictures, and Paranormal Activity’s success begat more child successors than I have space in a single article to talk about? In a way, it’s fitting that one film about demonic possession acclaimed for its low-budget filmmaking would create the perfect conditions for…another film about demonic possession hailed for its low-budget filmmaking.

Looking past Paranormal Activity’s own hatchlings (which I will get to that series one day, believe me), the 2010s saw the likes of The Bay, Trollhunter, and of course, V/H/S repopulating the found footage landscape with great horror. I genuinely believe REC dragged found footage back up from its watery grave, and for that, we should be thankful.

Why You Should Watch the REC Series Today

So, the next time you’re about to pop a Grave Encounters into your Blu-ray player or open up Shudder to rewatch Gonjiam Haunted Asylum, consider giving some love to the re-animator of the genre and watch one of the REC films. If anything, you’ll at least have seen one of the best-found footage films to date.

Or, in the case of REC 4, a movie where they liquefy a monkey with a boat engine.