(NOTICE: This article may contain spoilers if you haven’t seen [rec] or Quarantine)
Heeeeeey everybody!
We’ll be posting next week’s schedule sometime today, but until that time, let me just siren-song you into considering coming out for tonight’s screening of [rec] 2!
“Ed, that’s silly. I’ve never seen [rec]! Why would I see [rec] 2?”
I’m glad you asked me that, invisible interactor. The main attraction for the masses about [rec] 2, is that the original [rec] is Quarantine in a different language (Spanish trailer for [rec], but, don’t worry, our copy of [rec] 2 has subtitles). Basically, what I am trying to say if that if you’ve seen EITHER film, you are a valid candidate for [rec] 2.
“Now, surely there are SOME differences between [rec] and Quarantine?”
Surely! But not many. Other than some very minor stylistic choices, and a few extra characters in Quarantine to up the body count (USA! USA! USA!), the only major and relevant difference is the nature of the virus that turns people into the zombies in the film.
(Here come those spoilers I warned you about…)
Essentially, both films end in the room where the virus originated – the penthouse apartment at the top of the building. In Quarantine, if I remember correctly, the virus has been developed in smaller mammals (dogs and cats), and – oops – somehow spread to humans. It’s basically super rabies.
In [rec], however, it is discovered that the person living in the penthouse is part of a doomsday cult, has bred this disease in rats, and then systematically infected himself and several doomed orphans whom he has been keeping in his attic. His intention being to remove life from the planet in the name of Satan (presumably).
In both films, you get to see both the Alpha Zombie (it looks way different than the others, so that’s the term I’m giving it) and one of the orphans, which is all-hopped up on virus too (though in Quarantine, because of their changed ending, there is no explanation of why there’s an Alpha Zombie, or why there’s a plagued child in the attic). The films end with the heroine, Angela Vidal, and her Camera man getting dispatched by the Alpha Zombie.
“Okay, so there’s some differences. I think I can keep those straight. But why tell us this?”
[rec] 2, from what I have read, begins immediately after the first one ends. 15 minutes after their last contact with anyone alive inside, A SWAT team, outfitted with cameras, goes into the tenement building to clean house. Will they succeed? Hard to say.
I guess you’ll just have to come and watch it…
[rec] 2 screens tonight at 8pm @ Ed’s place.
