Zombie Love Triangle

“[REC]³ Genesis” is the third installment of the Spanish horror series “[Rec],” whose first film some readers may recognize via its 2008 American remake, “Quarantine.” That first film in the franchise was shuffled out with other sub-par “zombie” riff-raff in the waves of successive money grabs following the financial success of “28 Days Later” in 2002. Despite such trends, “[Rec]” and “[Rec]²,” released in 2007 and 2009, stood out from that lot for a reason. Its first-person-shooter account of a quarantined group fending off a demonic outbreak was a deftly woven pastiche of horror tropes told with mockumentary gusto (the “[Rec]” of the title stand for the “record” indicator of the ever-present videography whose documentation comprises the film). Think “The Blair Witch Project” with a hefty dose of attention deficit disorder. “[Rec]” and “[Rec]²”‘s interlocking narratives unabashedly aspired to little more than a framework upon which to hang a series of immersive frights and fritzed screen chills, the experience of the two films thus being not unlike a haunted house ride designed by giddy pranksters who adored their source material. With that story line’s exhaustion and with faux documentary trappings (see “Paranormal Activity”) having already become something of a contemporary horror movie cliché, director Paco Plaza and co-screenwriter Liuso Berdejo, in a kind of parallel with George Romero’s reiterative “_____ of the Dead” series, smartly decided to begin a new chapter housed within the outbreak of the “[Rec]” world. This choice allowed the “[REC]³ Genesis” creators to shed mindless convention plaguing the series and supplant it with a distinctive narrative voice in what amounts to a playful and oddly moving horror film.

The parallel chapter that “[REC]³ Genesis” represents could be summarized by way of positing the following perverse question: What would a zombie outbreak at a wedding look like? The answer that comes in the form of “Genesis” could sit contentedly as a companion piece to Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia”—albeit with gore and a more compatible bride and groom. That’s to say, Plaza and Berdejo, like von Trier, take a sadistic pleasure in upending the artifice of a wedding ceremony, but in this case with close friends and family turned into flesh-eating hordes, and for a good portion of the film this destruction is the prime directive. There is a surreal, madcap delight afoot here as the possessed flood the dance floor, devour the bridal party, and prompt the requisite “drunk uncle” to projectile vomit blood. And yet, where von Trier cleaved his lovers by the opening act’s end, Plaza and Berdejo make their newlyweds re-consummation amid the carnage the driving force behind “Genesis.” The heavy-handed melodrama permeating the efforts of bride Clara (Leticia Dolera) and groom Koldo (Diego Martín) to survive the campy mayhem surrounding them results in a kind of wonderful ironic frisson. It’s almost as if an unfazed telenovela were occurring within the heart of a riotous zombie flick. When Koldo dons a medieval suit of armor wielding the wedding cake knife in order to “rescue” Clara, it’s clear that the material is knowingly rooted in a classical romantic tradition. But instead of a green knight or lengthy sea voyage separating its lovers, “[REC]³ Genesis” inserts flesh-eating demons and lets the body parts fly. When Clara uses a chainsaw to refashion her wedding gown into a mini-skirt in order to more deftly behead the undead and thereby rescue herself, Plaza and company reveal that they’ve invoked the archetype of the chivalrous, armored knight and drawn upon its primacy only to turn it on its head—to update and revitalize genre and myth.

Moments both tender and ludicrous, such as the one in which Clara gently implores her soulmate to perform an impromptu amputation on her, result in a powerful ambiguity which one wonders would be possible from contemporary American horror cinema at this moment. Roughly a quarter of the way into the film, when a character smashes the wedding videographer’s camera, rendering the film a blank screen, a startling moment overtakes “[REC]³ Genesis”: It abandons its first-person shooter mode and reasserts itself with full classic Hollywood continuity editing. A glossy title screen fills the frame! Composer Mikel Salas’s score trembles! Cinematographer Pablo Rosso’s image returns unshaken (gasp) and lushly lit (double gasp)! And Plaza and Berdejo’s screenplay relinquishes its hallmark gimmick and lets the “recording” die. In such a moment it is difficult not to wonder, “Is ‘The Blair Witch’ finally dead?” Regardless, expunging such contrivances opens up the space into which the filmmakers are finally able to articulate their love of the genre from an individual perspective, to expound on their influences, to weave the ambiguity that a rich art deserves. And the results reflect it.

George Romero, dubbed “The Godfather of The Dead” for his pioneering role in the genre, famously said that zombies are his metaphorical device of choice. That he simply transposes his current concerns and inquiries as an artist, with a smattering of gore, of course, onto them and the associations resonate. That the creators of “[REC]³ Genesis” lay down their market novelties and choose love, death, and love-transcending-death-in-life as their concern (with a healthy smattering of gore) reveals that zombies may have some life left in them yet to not only scare us, but to move us, as well.

~http://cinespect.com/