Rec 3: Genesis
DVD
Directed by Paco Plaza
Written by Paco Plaza, Luis Berdejo
Starring Leticia Dolera, Javier Botet, Diego Martin, Carla Nieto
R
80 mins
2012
I admit that I've been looking forward to Rec 3: Genesis since the last five minutes of Rec 2. This is a series that has made me abundantly happy indeed, so another slice off this partciular loaf should be a delight. Of course, I say "should" because stranger things have happened, and disappointments are all too real.
Rec 3: Genesis takes us out to the wedding of Koldo and Clara, which apparently took place not too far away from the apartment complex of the original two Rec installments. At least, this seems to be the case when for little noticeable reason, Koldo and Clara's wedding turns into an orgiastic frenzy of violence, gore, and occasional dismemberment. With her special day shattered, Clara's going to have to go Bridezilla on the attacking hordes if she has any hope of seeing her honeymoon, let alone her first anniversary, together with her husband.
The first minute is pretty clever, actually, showing me the video from Koldo and Clara's wedding rather than the movie itself. An unusual trick to say the least, and frankly, this starts out very smoothly indeed. Maybe it spends a bit too much time on the wedding, but it'll really get cranking up just ahead of twenty minutes in. And when I say "get cranking", it will indeed get cranking. Like a crazy mad bastard this thing will get cranking.
Rec started taking on religious overtones back in the second one, and the third rapidly proves to be no exception. In fact, those overtones get much stronger and become part of the overall narrative with a solid effect. Frankly, this is horror as it was supposed to be, with the good guys taking on an evil on a downright cosmic level, yet in many cases still managing to succeed and even thrive. On a certain level, it's inspirational. Oh, and bonus points for creative use of a stick blender as a weapon. Still, it's going to do some unexpected things to the plotline, and that may not be welcome on all fronts.
The ending is actually a bit on the disappointing side--fair warning, it's only a happy ending in a macrocosmic sense--but it's still reasonably sound and does a fair job of tying the whole thing together. It's still disappointing, though, in that one of the better franchises of the last twenty years craps out to this. I'm hopeful for a Rec 4, of course, just to see how far down this particular rabbit hole goes, and if it stops here, well, I'm not exactly satisfied. This whole series has been awesome so far, but to end on this note, I can do without that.
The special features include English subtitles--some of the special features will even pack them in as this is primarily a Spanish-language title--as well as a set of deleted scenes and outtakes. Since this movie was only 80 minutes long you'd think they could leave the deleted stuff in without incident, but hey. Additionally, there are also trailers for "Breaking Bad Season 4", "Quarantine 2", "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning", and "Resident Evil: Damnation".
Rec 3: Genesis isn't how I would have wanted this particular slice of joy to end, but frankly, it's not half bad. I'm hoping for more, of course, but if this is all there is, well, we didn't do to badly on this whole series.