I’ve had a more successful month this month with my film watching! I managed to finally tick off Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which I’ve had on my list for a long time and turns out it’s just as good and important as everyone says it is. Here are some other films I’ve watched this month.

Deep Dive: Rec, 2007

I rewatched Rec as I hadn’t seen it in a really long time. It’s a Spanish found footage horror film, following a television reporter Angela and her cameraman, Pablo, as they film the night shift at a fire station in Barcelona. When the station gets a call to investigate an incident in an apartment building, events quickly get out of hand. It turns out some kind of zombie virus has broken out and once they get inside, all hell breaks loose.

Blair Witch Project is arguably the foundational text for found footage, and also happens to be one of the best of the genre. I think with the advent of the internet together with video cameras becoming increasingly available, found footage films became more and more prominent. Like with zombies, they are so easy to make and construct. This means there are a lot of badly done zombie/found footage films. Rec, however, skilfully mashes together the zombie and found footage genres to create an adrenaline fulled, terrifying example of horror.

The film is 78 minutes long. In this time, it manages to do what many other and longer films fail to, establish characters, deliver some incredible scares and moves along at pace. There is nothing extraneous here. Once they’re inside the building, it becomes very pacy, with no time to take a breath at all as a viewer. As the virus takes hold, the tensions between the residents which were clearly already present, heighten as they try to find a way out of the building. There are some lovely scares in dark corridors that reminded me of Silent Hill (which I’ve been playing recently), flashes of body horror and great escalating dread.

Watching this post COVID, makes it so much worse. The firefighters and the film crew arrive at the apartment building to all the residents gathered in the hallway. Almost as soon as they enter the building, some kind of governmental disease prevention team quarantine the building. No one is allowed in or out, the building has massive sheets of plastic drop down. The people inside are scared and confused, most notably a mother, who insists her 6 year old daughter, displaying flu like symptoms, only has tonsillitis. At one point, a doctor from outside dons a hazmat suit and you see them carefully making sure that every inch is sealed properly before he enters. Compare that to the complaints from NHS staff about the lack of proper kit and care shown towards them (although no one in this thinks the government are doing a great job either). There’s even a section where one resident blames the Asian family also living in the building for the situation, which I felt perhaps foretold some of what came after the film.

I will not spoil the film, but I thought it ended at a certain point with one of the best jump scares in horror history. In fact it goes on for another ten minutes or so which meant that I was just as scared as I was the first time round.

What else I’ve watched this month:

RoboCop, 1987: There is some really nasty body horror in this, unusually so for what is basically an action film. More Twin Peaks actors in this than expected - it took me ages to place Leeland Palmer! The adverts that they create for the citizens of this world are absolutely unhinged and I loved it. Also enjoyed the robots who are defeated due to stairs -very Doctor Who!

Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, 1971: A very interesting and late Hammer Horror film that bundles the Jekyll and Hyde story into Jack the Reaper and Burke and Hare all at the same time. This film contains every stereotype of Victorian London, with some of the nosiest and annoying neighbours of all time. All of this is wrapped up in an exploration of gender fluidity and sexuality that is more sensitively handled than one would expect.

Carry on Screaming!, 1966 (rewatch): I am reliably informed that this is one of the best of the Carry On films, but my experience is this which is great and Carry On Constable which was abysmal. Rewatching having now seen many Hammer Horror films and others, I can really see the parody. In fact both Carry On and Hammer ran for roughly the same length of time, and both are such British institutions, it’s a really interesting comparison/crossover. Fenella Fielding could’ve walked right onto the set of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Just such a lot of fun, with some great jokes.

The Duke of Burgundy, 2014: It’s been a very horror heavy month this month, but I did manage this which is an erotic thriller/romance directed by Peter Strickland that really is the epitome of arthouse. I loved Berberian Sound Studio so much and have had this on the list for a long time. I actually think I was a bit disappointed. It had some interesting things to say about performance and ritual in relationships, about compromise and the things you do to make your partner happy, even if you don’t necessarily want to. I’m glad I’ve watched it, I just don’t think it quite connected with me, although it does 100% pass the Bechdel Test.

That’s it for the month - see you in March!