Review:

Horror films don't scare me. I'm not saying that to make you think I'm a badass (I'm most certainly not), but to put into perspective how good this movie is. [REC] definitely has quite a few logistical plot holes (Non-spolier example: If the characters stop recording to rewind and re-watch what was just recorded, why would the footage we see include the rewind and replay?) and does fall into most of the horror movie tropes, but it does a lot of things right. The acting is pretty good (great for a horror movie) and they do a good job with the effects with their low budget. What [REC] does best though, is creating legitimate tension and pulling off some well executed jump scares (although it feels like an insult to call them jump scares). Towards the end, [REC] got me as close to being scared as any movie has since I was a child. The plot inconsistencies were really the only thing that keeps this from being a five star horror. It's a quick film that's well paced and is great at hiding it's visual imperfection. Instead of making things happen off screen to save on the effects budget, they expertly use the fact that what we are seeing is from one handheld camera. I recently watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how constantly would have the actual violence happen off-screen; [REC] will have the camera in the exact right place so that another character's shoulder would block where the effect would have been necessary. [REC] is the best pure, simple horror movie that I have seen in a very long time. It is worth noting that there is an English dub that you should not watch under any circumstance unless you absolutely cannot do subtitles.