![[REC] 4: Apocalypse](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/sash/4FyxwxECzL-U1J8.png)
After a promising beginning for the franchise with two exhilarating and frightening films, REC 3 threw the biggest cinematic spanner into the works like no other film franchise I have ever witnessed. After that, I knew that REC 4 couldn't possibly be any worse. So it has that going for it.
REC 4 certainly is an improvement, but it's still a disappointment. What it wisely does is ditch the found-footage style completely, as opposed to the third film's disorientating switch partway through. The "comic" elements from the third film still unfortunately linger in bits and pieces, though the overall dark mood of the film works in its favour.
Yet the film doesn't seem to know what to do with itself, its plot or its characters (a warm welcome back to Manuela Velasco, by the way), and ends up being a bizarre amalgam of other sources. It's like Captain Phillips crossed with Braindead. And by the time the ending does arrive, I had sort of already wished the ship would just blow up, and bury the last of the franchise at sea where it belongs.
It's an okay film, but it exists as a patchy attempt to crawl back onto the rails. For what has been billed as the final REC film, it is most unsatisfying.
REC 4 certainly is an improvement, but it's still a disappointment. What it wisely does is ditch the found-footage style completely, as opposed to the third film's disorientating switch partway through. The "comic" elements from the third film still unfortunately linger in bits and pieces, though the overall dark mood of the film works in its favour.
Yet the film doesn't seem to know what to do with itself, its plot or its characters (a warm welcome back to Manuela Velasco, by the way), and ends up being a bizarre amalgam of other sources. It's like Captain Phillips crossed with Braindead. And by the time the ending does arrive, I had sort of already wished the ship would just blow up, and bury the last of the franchise at sea where it belongs.
It's an okay film, but it exists as a patchy attempt to crawl back onto the rails. For what has been billed as the final REC film, it is most unsatisfying.