Note: [REC] Genesis hits cinemas on August 31st and DVD & Blu-ray on September 3rd.
In an age when zombie movies are made and distributed faster than you can say They’re coming to get you Barbara’, it’s often hard to identify the shit from the shit hot without getting your hands dirty and wading through the living dead minefield.
Thankfully, to save you the trouble, [REC] Genesis arrives at London’s Frightfest for its UK premiere with the festival’s seal of approval.
Going solo this time around, director Paco Plaza takes the action away from the apartment block from the first two REC movies and relocates the flesh-eating antics to a nearby wedding ceremony. Here, young Clara and Koldo are celebrating their love with friends and family, including Uncle Victor, who has a strange bite on his hand
The alcohol flows and merriment is high as the wedding reception shenanigans get under way, though when Victor pounces on a loved one and takes a chunk out of her neck, all hell breaks loose. Clara and Koldo are separated in the chaos of the zombie outbreak, but with the help of family members and wedding guests, they attempt to survive the onslaught of flesh eaters and hope to somehow make their way back to one another.
Going for sniggers over scares for the third (but not the last) [REC] outing, Plaza risks ticking off fans with the new zom-rom-com direction. But the new setting, the anything goes humour and the buckets of blood make this a refreshing addition to the series that wisely avoids repetition by not revisiting its old haunt.
Oddly, the film drops its home movie-style footage about a third in, and the film loses much of the intensity and impact of the shaky cam chaos as a result. But this seems incidental as gore and guffaws are clearly at the top of Plaza’s agenda, and the laughs and the violence are delivered in spades.
Overall Verdict: Chainsaw-wielding brides and buckets of blood. What more could you ask for?
Reviewer: Lee Griffiths