[REC]³ Genesis (2012)

22 minutes until the title! Genesis refers to the less shaky filming style, nice look and amazing sound, chainsaw bride, emotional ending. Generic zombie film, 5 of these films and only Quarantine (2008) is worth watching, preposterous in places, stupid religious angle, not funny or scary.

As a fan of the previous 2 films, i can say that i love this third installment. Rec 1 is about how infection started with little possession stuff coming near the end, with an original camera POV. Rec 2, still in camera POV explains further that this infection is truly a possession, given how one of the infected can mimic little girl's voice to lure the victim, and by the end i was stunned by that worm-like thing as the source of it all. And Rec 3 is about the side trip from main story and further explain how the infection turn into possession by evil entities. This time they're adding a romantic story. The first 20 minutes is in camera POV, but quickly turn into regular movie view because Koldo destroy the camera in panic situation (well, who doesn't?). the regular view will continue with Rec 4. By now Rec is no more than a franchise, not movie concept like Rec 1 and 2, something i'm fine with, given i care more about the story than the view.Honestly, i know nothing about the cast. But i love with what they're doing with this movie. Leticia Dolera is the real star of the show. her acting is superb in every scene, so does Diego Martin as Koldo. I love how determined they are in finding each other in the midst of chaos and terror. I can feel the emotion going between them, especially at the ending. When after all they've been through, in the end all is in vain. Clara still got infected, Koldo decide to die with his love rather than leaving her, and both die after got shot by the army. this scene in my opinion is very sad. It shows the undying love they have for each other. And if you pay closer look, you can see that at brief moment before her death, Clara turn to human once more, seeing how she embraces Koldo's hand one last time. Even though her eyes is still like that of the infected, but her expression says otherwise. This scene is so sad i cried a little even after a second and third viewing, i love it!There are no particularly bad scene with this movie, but there's this 1 scene that bothers me. The sewer scene, where Clara split one of the infected's body in two with a chainsaw. It's like cracking cookies. It could be better. That's it, the rest of the gorefest is fine. The laughing zombie uncle is the creepiest one!Last words. If you cling to the first 2 movies for their camera POV, this will be a disappointment to you. but if you look at the story threads, you will love this movie like i do. This is a love-it or hate-it movie, and i choose to love it.

SPOILER ALERT: If for some reason you don't want this turd sandwich spoiled for you stop reading now. I need stress something: I created an IMDb account specifically to trash this soul staining piece of crap. So if you liked it or whatever, then trust me this review is not for you. First off let's talk about Rec 1 & 2. Rec 1 took what was more or less a generic "viral outbreak" premise and spiced it up by framing it as a found footage film. That's what made it work. The story itself is kind of one dimensional, but presenting it from the perspective of a camcorder gave it an intense intimacy that is missing from a lot of horror movies. It also didn't hurt that they did a great job with the casting, particularly with the lead Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco). Not only that, but the final ten minutes are some the most bone chilling in cinematic history, delivering on the set up of the entire film with a great payoff. That's all I'm gonna say about Rec 1.Rec 2 is a solid sequel. It doesn't have the fire of the original, nor is it as well paced, but it is entertaining and at the very least it looks sharper than the first one. All in all these two are must see for any horror fan, and I would even recommend them to people who are just looking to see a good movie. And then we got Rec 3.I was willing to cut this movie some slack. Then the groom makes a huge show of kicking the wedding video dude's camera broken, I guess cause he doesn't want people seeing his wedding turn into a zombie fest (?!). The movie then switches to traditional cinematography. Mind you I had no idea beforehand that they were abandoning the hand held perspective. So you can imagine my shock. Before I go on, allow me to explain exactly how stupid of a move this was on the director's part. Literally the ONE THING that set the previous Rec movies apart from other zombie movies is that they were found footage. That was their core mechanic if you will; everything, from plot structure to framing, was designed around this concept. That's what made it so cool and refreshing. So I can't imagine WHY Paco Plaza thought it was at all a good idea to do away with that! Without the found footage hook, all you're left with is a generic zombie film! That's it! Anyway, so they switch to traditional shooting. Now there is a LOT wrong with this movie, but for me, by far the worst grievance was the look of the film. It's one thing that they decided to shoot the thing with a film camera, what is unacceptable is how unbelievably bad the quality of picture is. Rec 3 looks TERRIBLE. It looks like a freaking Funny or Die video. I'm not joking. This is like some Iphone quality looking stuff. It's disgusting. It becomes abundantly clear exactly the directors stuck to found footage with the first two movies, and it's because they have no idea how to make a film that doesn't look like a freaking Disney channel original movie. Actually some of those probably look even better.The rest of the things wrong with this movie are covered pretty well by the other reviews on here so I'll just cover them briefly.This is one of the most tonally inconsistent films I've ever seen. One minute it's dead serious, the next it's campier than a Joel Schumaker movie. This is almost NEVER a good idea for filmmakers to try, unless that is how you naturally tell a story (see: Edgar Wright, Sam Raimi) or something that you've practiced over time (Coen Brothers). In lesser hands, we get crap like this that has no idea what it wants to be, and ends up being nothing. Even with the ending, they couldn't decide whether to play it straight or not. This is perhaps best shown by one of the final moments, when the groom kisses his dying bride in what SHOULD be a touching gesture, only to have her rip out his ENTIRE tongue with her teeth. Yeah. Going back the setting, I have to say the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a zombie wedding. It's a shame though, cause the director does absolutely nothing with it. There was potential to do a lot of interesting symbolic stuff, like maybe have the bride have to kill her dad to signify her "losing a father and gaining a husband". The whole thing could have even been a metaphor for how marriage effectively cuts you off from your family and you're left to fend for yourself and your new family in a dangerous world. Stuff like that. But no, none of that is explored and what we get is the most boring, risk averse horror movie to come along in some time.I'm sure there's more I'm missing but this review is getting long and thinking about this movie is giving me a headache. Suffice to say, this movie is awful. Only watch it if you're curious as to how bad it is, and even then for god's sake do NOT pay money for it. Also, just to end this on a positive note, Rec 4 succeeded in saving the franchise from oblivion, and since Rec 3 feature none of the original characters and takes place in a completely separate location, I'm cool with this being the god awful spin off nobody talks about.

(44%) The series that marks a high-point in the found-footage fad comes this decent little time-passer. At a mere 1 hour 20 minutes in length this is still a vastly over-long film for the plot that involves a somewhat typical, and I must say very lavish Spanish wedding that is invaded by zombie demons. And that's about it really. Pretty much the entire wedding ceremony is recorded hand-held style, then once things start to get messy (interesting) this then ditches it and moves into a standard shot film. It's pretty clear that the makers, like almost everyone else, have grown tired of that method of film-making to the point in which they actually mock sub-genre's flaws at one point. The mayhem featured is entertaining, but this is a hollow, quite childish gore flick that unlike the other films in the series this completely lacks all scares. Overall this is worth a look for fans and gore flicks in general, but it's too flawed and base to be a must watch.