[Rec] (2007)

Episode 84, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Craig:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig,

Todd: and I’m Todd.

Craig: And Todd asked me to pick the movie this week, and so I went with the 2007 film, Rec, r e c, as in the letters you see, on the video camera when you are recording. The reason that I picked this movie is because I’ve wanted to see it for quite a while because I have seen the American remake, I have seen the American remake sequel, and I have seen 2 of the sequels of, the original movie, but I have never seen the original. I, was just unable to get my hands on it when I was interested, and Todd was able to find it for us. And so we watched it, for this podcast, and, I liked it, and I’m excited to talk about it. What’s your history with this movie, Todd? Have you seen it before? 

Todd:  I have not seen it before, but like you, it’s kinda been on my list, especially, you know, since 2007. I think we were seeing a huge influx around that time of found footage films starting from, I don’t know, 1998 or 99 from The Blair Witch Project. You know, I was thinking about this today, Craig, that, you and I, I think, have a unique burden to bear with our choice of podcasts. Right? I mean, our subject matter here there are a lot of movie podcasts out there, but we’ve chosen to do horror, and that just means that we have to plow through a lot of found footage films. I mean, I don’t True. I I’m not aware of any, like, found footage romantic comedies or found footage adventure movies. It seems like they’re all just kind of right here in the horror genre for us to for us to watch. 

Craig:  Yeah. It’s it’s true. There are a lot of them, and a lot of people are just kinda turned off by the medium. You know, the whole shaky cam thing, I I understand that for some people, it it it causes a physical reaction, you know, they they it gives them a headache or makes them dizzy or makes them feel, nauseated. Todd doesn’t bother me. It’s never bothered me. The found footage thing has never bothered me. You know? I kinda feel the way about it that I feel about any genre.   You know, it can be done well, and it can be crap. And in this case, I think that it it it it worked pretty well. It’s believable. You know, the premise is you’ve got this young woman, a television personality. She works, on, like a late night show that probably airs sometime in the middle of the night. It’s called While You’re Asleep. And it’s just kind of one of those special interest kind of shows where she goes around investigating really what probably are fairly mundane things. And in this case, what she’s doing is, she’s following around some firefighters for the night to kind of see what their life is like.   And the main girl’s name is Angela Vidal, and she’s played by a young woman named Manuela Velasco, who apparently, is is really a television host and personality, in her native country. I assume Spain, but I could be wrong there. Spanish speaking. She and her, cameraman, Pablo, follow around these firefighters, and they start out at at the fire station, and and they’re kind of hoping something will happen. I mean, they she says that on camera several times, like, I I just wish something would happen. Not that I really want anything bad to happen, but we we just wanna see some action. And, they eventually do, find themselves in the middle of some action, and it ends up being more than what they had bargained for. It’s not necessarily the most unique premise, or necessarily even the most exciting premise, but it feels natural and it feels realistic.   You know, the first, I don’t know, 15, 20 minutes of this very short movie, it’s only about an hour and 17 minutes long, it feels real. It feels like something that you might stumble across, at 5 o’clock in the morning if you happen to be up at that time. For me, it works. You know? I I these characters, the way that they’re introduced, it it feels, very natural and, realistic, at least, from the beginning. And and I thought that it was an effective setup for this kind of movie which ends up being I was trying to describe this last night to, a friend and and and he was like, you know, what what kind of movie is it? And I said, well, I I I guess it’s kind of a zombie movie, or or one of those movies like 28 Todd Later where it’s some sort of infection that, causes people to behave aggressively and and murderously. And it fits very well into that that genre, but it it’s it’s a little bit different too, and and I appreciated that. 

Todd:  Yeah. And, you know, I think we’ve talked about this before when we talk about the found footage films, and that is it seems to matter an awful lot, at least it does to me, the setup. Like, the setup is key. Is is it going to be a believable setup? You have to have a reason for this footage to exist, you know, and then therein lies the the trouble of of the film is how do you portray the events happening in a believable way as such that there the cameraman is a character? And how do you incorporate that character into the film, and how do you give him or her an excuse, a reason for continuing to film and have that camera in front of them throughout all of the atrocities and crazy things. Like, you know, you and I would have just tossed the camera behind us and run Sure. You know, in a lot of these movies. And I think that this movie, as you said, starts out rather boring, and and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s it’s boring in that the premise is very believable.   It’s this woman, who is putting together this TV show, and we’re seeing, you know, her footage from it. And so she’s wandering around, and she’s talking to the firefighters, and it’s not uninteresting. It’s about as interesting as this TV show would be, you know? 

Craig:  Right. Exactly. 

Todd:  So in and of itself, it’s kinda neat. You’re you’re she’s talking to the firemen, and they’re saying kind of interesting stuff, like, you know, our jobs are usually pretty boring. We sit around and we it’s like the we hope that the alarm doesn’t go off, and it’s a good day when it doesn’t. But when it does go, you know, when we are called out, a lot of times it’s just like cliche things like like saving a pet or helping somebody, you know, unlock their car or just weird things like this. And so like you said, she’s the whole time, she’s just she’s just repeating to Pablo, my gosh. I really hope something interesting happens. I really hope the alarm goes off, or else it’s gonna be a really boring TV show. And it’s a really good setup for a film like this.   And then as the intensity goes on, we get another reason for the the filming to happen, and that is as a journalist and as these things are happening around them, they wanna record it. They need to document what’s happening even for their own personal safety. Right. Later. And I mean, never before, I mean, never before really has that been truer today when we find all kinds of crazy situations in the news where we’re so glad that people have cameras trained on events that just happened in front of them, and we now give a lot of leeway to people. Someone’s it seems like if somebody’s in trouble, it’s good if there are 2 people there. 1 person to help them Right. And one person to document it with their cell phone.   You know? 

Craig:  Yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s absolutely true. And and I think that, part of the reason that the movie feels so real. I I don’t know if it’s because this young lady actually is a television host or if it’s just her acting skills, but, like, I I don’t feel like I know her, but I feel like I know who she is. You know? She’s this young, attractive journalist, and she’s hungry. You know? Like, I I imagine that she she’s she’s been given this TV show that probably in fact, somebody even says this at some at some point. 1 of the firefighters asks what the name of this show is and and she says, it’s called While You Were Sleep.   And he says, oh, well then who watches it? You know, like, if it if it’s, you know, documenting things that happen in the middle of the night and it’s airing in the middle of the night, who actually watches it? And I think that that provides a lot of motivation to her character. You know, I can only imagine that she aspires to more than this. And so when serious stuff starts happening and she realizes that she’s in the middle of a real story, you know, she’s determined to document it, and she’s determined, to make sure that this is something that’s going to potentially help her in in her career. And I found that to be very believable. Even when things start to get really frightening, you know, she, continues to insist that the cameraman keep filming. And I imagine that he’s probably in a similar position, you know, just this camera guy who probably does a lot of grunt work. He’s doing this show in the middle of the night. If this turned out to be a big deal, it could potentially be, a big boost in both of their careers.   And so you do believe that they would keep filming. Now when it gets towards the end, you start to wonder. You know, when when they’re really, really in peril, you start to wonder. But this the movie also does a good job of kind of making it a necessity to have the camera because eventually, at some point towards the the finale of the film, the the power starts to go out, and so the only light source that they have is the, light source on the camera. And so it would make sense that that they would continue to carry it around. So as far as found footage goes, and and I know that that’s an issue that you have with these movies. Why would they keep filming? That wasn’t really a question for me in this one. I, you know, I felt like it it it seemed natural that they would keep filming. 

Todd:  Yeah. I I completely agree. I I that made me super happy about it. And as a former news reporter myself, I could put myself in her situation as well. And in fact, there’s even a point in the movie where they come to blows with some of the characters over the fact that he needs to keep filming. It’s her insistence. There’s, you know, some authorities that come in later and insist that the cameras be turned off, and there’s a whole argument about it. No, it needs to run.   So yeah, all kinds of good reasons and ways than this in which this movie, builds that case and, makes itself feel a little more genuine and authentic that way, and I appreciated that 

Craig:  for sure. 

Todd:  Yeah, me too. So they’re, you know, they’re they’re doing their thing, and at one point they’re, you know, sleeping, and they’re playing basketball to pass the time, and the alarm does finally go off. And it’s apparently a person trapped in an apartment. So they all pile in the fire truck and they go out, and the police were already there. So it’s, she says, well, this seems like it might be a bigger deal than than, the normal, and the guy’s like, oh no, this is pretty normal, you know, police sometimes arrive. And they go in to this apartment building, and there are a number of people downstairs, a number of characters we’re gonna meet up with later, but there’s a woman with a young girl, and she happens to be complaining that her husband is supposed to be coming back. He’s out right now, trying to get medicine for her because she has tonsillitis and she needs some antibiotics. There’s a Chinese couple or or family down there as well.   We later learned there’s kind of a textile shop behind attached to this apartment building, you know, on the ground floor, but right behind this area where we’re in here. A number of different authority figures in there, and of course, Jennifer and Pablo, and the 2 firemen that they are basically going out there with, named Alex and Manu. 

Craig:  And and the reporters the reporter’s name is Angela. You said Jennifer. Jennifer is the name of the little Jennifer is the name of the little girl. 

Todd:  That’s right. And there’s another guy named Caesar. Mhmm. I’m an interesting character there, too. And yeah, so they they all arrive and they go upstairs to where this woman’s apartment is. Now it’s interesting because the authorities immediately, like, first it seems like it’s just the police kinda taking charge of the situation, and they’re telling everybody to stay downstairs, and what’s this camera doing here? Why is this guy with us? Why are the reporters here? And the firemen are like, well, they’re just a local TV crew following us around. And eventually they come to this conclusion that, okay, you just turn off the camera when I say you need to turn off the camera, and you stay out of the way and can come along. Up, to the this apartment that’s on the 2nd or third floor here.   And, of course, you’re on edge thinking what are they gonna find. Right? But there’s really no good reason to think that anything weird is going to happen, you know, in the context of the movie, except for the fact that you know you’re watching a horror movie. Right. And the apartments in this apartment building are huge. I think I think they’re in Barcelona, but it seems like these apart I mean, this apartment building must be rather large, and each apartment takes up, like, a whole half of the building. They break it through the door, and they walk along through a long, narrow hallway into this apartment, and the lights are off. And at the end of this hallway is is an older woman, like an elderly woman, but she’s 

Craig:  Mhmm. 

Todd:  Kind of almost without any clothes on. She’s just got like a like a negligee type thing on and some underwear, and she Yeah. Looks to be covered in blood or at least she’s just sweating profusely. They go there, they’re trying to calm her down. She seems a little disoriented and weird. And suddenly, she just leaps at one of these guys and starts biting his throat. It’s the main police man, I think, that we had been seeing. 

Craig:  Yeah. She she jumps on him and and bites him, and everybody else just kind of, runs away and and runs downstairs. You know, one of the only issues that I had with the beginning of this premise is that the whole thing revolved around you know, this call, this emergency call revolved around the fact that people in the apartment complex had heard a loud noise and had heard a woman screaming. And so, you know, they’ve got the cops there and they’ve got the, firemen there. It it seemed odd to me that there were no medical people called. You know, you would think that an ambulance would be on hand, as well. I guess when, the filmmakers were conceptualizing this, they had originally considered having, Angela following around a group of police officers, which would have made just as much logical sense. You know, the the police are usually first respondents, but they felt like firefighters were more sympathetic. 

Todd:  That that 

Craig:  people that people like firefighters better than cops. And, you know, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was kind of weird to me that there were no, medical, people around. But you’re right. She she attacks one of the cops. And and again, that was a a lot of this happens when it’s it’s really dark. Yeah. And that added to the fact that the camera is moving around so quickly and and it’s it’s it’s so shaky. Sometimes it was difficult to tell what exactly was happening and so it was kind of hard to tell sometimes who was being attacked and this was one of those, those times.   And ultimately, you know, that, that didn’t really bother me. In fact, it kind of added to the suspense. You know, you don’t really know exactly what’s going on, and that’s okay. But one of the cops gets bitten, in the throat. Like, you see, it it’s really quick, but you see, like, it he gets his throat bitten out. Yeah. And somehow they get him downstairs, and they all they all end up downstairs, but a couple of them stay upstairs. And when they get downstairs, you know, they’re they’re talking about, okay, this this cop, you know, he’s bleeding profusely.   You know, we’ve got to get him to a hospital. We’ve got him to get him to an ambulance. And so immediately they try to get him outside and they find that they’re locked in. And there are authorities outside, lots of them, who are sealing off this building. And they they kinda communicate through loudspeaker or bullhorn or something and say, we, you know, we have to keep you locked in. It’s it’s for your own safety. You know, just just hold tight and we’ll get you out of there as soon as we can. And it becomes clear very soon that they’re being quarantined.   And that’s the title of the American remake is quarantine, and that’s exactly what it is. And so they’re they’re stuck in there. And And while all of this, you know, it’s chaotic. You know, these people want out. You know, there’s the mother who has the daughter who’s sick, and her husband is outside, and, she’s got a cell phone, and and she’s on the cell phone, and she says that her husband is out there, and he says that there’s tons of cops out there, and and they’re blocking off the streets, and nobody knows what’s going on, and everybody’s kind of panicking. And then in the background, which nobody is facing, everybody’s facing the door, but the cameras is facing the Craig. And so we see in the background, the other fireman, this one actually is Alex, not Manu, but, the other fireman falls. You know, all of this is taking place, like, in I I wanna say lobby.   It’s not like a big fancy lobby. It’s just, you know, the the small bottom floor entryway with with the stairs, you know, kind of spiraling up above it. And, Alex, the firefighter, falls from one of the upper stories down to the bottom, and there’s just blood everywhere. And you don’t know what has happened. You don’t know why he’s fallen. And it’s really jarring. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. And I read that the actors didn’t know that was going to happen. And so they just heard it happen behind them and so their reactions were the actors’ actual reactions to this this incident happening. And that was something else that I just read about the movie in general. The actors were not given the full script. They didn’t know what was going to happen from day to day. They would they would show up, and they would get their shooting script for the day.   And so they didn’t know what the fate of their characters were going to be on any given day, which apparently, you know, added to the tension because they were kind of nervous and on edge, not really knowing what to expect each day. And I I’m sure speaking as, you know, a prestigious community theater actor. 

Todd:  Don’t sell your social here, Craig. 

Craig:  Oh, you know, only receiving your script in your lines, you know, a little bit before you’re actually meant to perform them and and not really having any idea of your character’s arc or motivation, that that would create anxiety. But it works here because they’re supposed to be on edge and they’re supposed to be anxious and not knowing what their fate is going to be. So, I I I actually thought that was really, effective. And and that just kind of Alex, you know, the firefighter falling under the floor, he’s covered in blood. Is he dead? You know, is he what’s going on? Why did he fall? What’s going on? There’s all this weird screaming coming from upstairs, and not only is it screaming, but it sounds unnatural. Like, supernatural or or demonic or something, and and nobody knows what’s going on. And and that that really is just kind of the impetus for for the chaos that ensues beyond this point. And I found it to be, really effective.   You know, I was in it. Edge of my seat might not be the right word, but, I was very interested to see what was happening, what was gonna come next. 

Todd:  Yeah. Me too. I think at this point, however, a There’s that textile shop and there’s a kind of a big door, kind of a kind of a garage door, kind of metal door that they I think they end up opening and getting these 2 injured people out there. It turns out that one of the guys in the apartment complex is an intern, so he has some medical knowledge, and I think the firefighters had some medical supplies with them. They said maybe there was a first aid kit or whatnot in the textile shop. So they kind of push them out into this textile shop area, even though they can’t get out the other side either because that’s also blocked off. But here, at some point, the camera cuts off to black for about 10 seconds, and then it comes back on. And Angela and Pablo are by themselves going up the staircases, like going up to investigate the apartment by themselves.   And I just didn’t get that part, like, with how do we jump from all this chaos and stuff downstairs to what Todd these 2 sneak away and decide that without anybody else, they were gonna go upstairs to, you know, to the source of all this madness and investigate? Oh, come on. You know, I thought that was a little that was a little weird. 

Craig:  Yeah. I think they were following the cops. I think that they were just a little bit they were lagging a little bit behind. 

Todd:  Really? 

Craig:  I think that the I think so. I I think that when the firefighter fell down, I think that the cops went back up. I think. 

Todd:  Yeah. You might be right. 

Craig:  Or maybe some of the cops were still up there. I don’t remember. But Well, yes. When they get up there 

Todd:  Yeah. There are cops up there. Yeah. You’re right. Well, they get up there and they’re going back through the apartment again, and the old woman, well actually there’s some other girl who comes running out towards them, from the apartment, and I’m not even clear as to who that was. Do you know who that was? 

Craig:  I am not either. At some point, somebody else well, okay. So this girl runs out, and the cops shoot this girl. And then the the old lady runs out and they they shoot her Todd. And it’s just kind of a moment where, Angela and Pablo, it’s almost like they have to collect themselves like, holy crap, like this is happening, like there are dead people, you know, in frame and they kind of take a moment to collect themselves. When they go back downstairs, one of the cops says something. There was another woman in her apartment and somebody says, oh, that was probably the Colombian girl. And and later on, they they go through the, well, they they try to take it yeah.   The roll call. They try to take inventory of where everybody lives, and they say that this Colombian girl lived in in one of these apartments downstairs. I’m not exactly sure, who she was or who she was supposed to be. I guess ultimately, it doesn’t really matter Except for the fact that I do know that in the, sequels, a lot of stuff from the original movie is referenced. And I don’t know if this is one of those things, that is referenced later on. One of the things that I do know Well, so they shoot those people and then of course it’s all, you know, chaos. But once things start to calm down a little bit, Angela starts, interviewing all of the, residents. And I this could have been a moment where things unnecessarily slowed down, but I actually really enjoyed this part.   It was actually, I found it to be, whether it was intentional or unintentional, I found it to be kind of funny. You know, here’s this girl, trying to go about, you know, okay, what do we do? Let’s interview all the residents. And, and she’s trying to do like these, this hard hitting interview with all of these people. And, she interviews the the medical intern, and he’s trying to tend to the wounded, and we see that they’re both just like mangled, they’ve had big chunks of their faces bitten out and things, and one of the wounded, we see his eyes just briefly and they’re totally completely clouded over. And so it’s an indication to us that probably changing, in some way getting zombified or whatever. But she talks to all these people and so she interviews, the intern, she interviews, an old couple, and it’s funny because they’re just bickering and fighting with one another. So she interviews, the Asian family, and we’re watching it in Spanish, but it seems like there’s a little bit of communication problems between, her and the Asian family, which provides a little bit more comedy. But then she interviews this little girl who we’ve seen several times.   Her name is Jennifer. Her mother has been saying throughout that her daughter is sick. She’s got tonsillitis. The dad has gone out to get antibiotics. But she interviews Jennifer and she asks Jennifer, Who do you live with? And she says, I live with my mom and my dad and my dog. And Angela says, Well, where is your dog? And she says, He’s at the vet. He got sick. And that immediately, you know, I think that that would set something off for anybody.   You know, we’re obviously looking at some sort of infection or whatever, but it particularly rang a bell for me because in one of the sequels, part 3, one of the guests, and I believe it’s the one who is first infected, talks about how he worked, in this, veterinary clinic, and he had been bitten by a dog. And so, even though I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen part 2, I’ve only seen parts 3 and part 4. It was nice for me to see how these are all kind of, interconnected. The interviews just go on. She interviews the mom who says she’s gonna sue. She’s gonna sue. And then Caesar who it seems like 

Todd:  is maybe this, like I don’t know. He’s 

Craig:  was he what? Like Italian or Greek or 

Todd:  I don’t know. I don’t know. 

Craig:  Kind of funny. He 

Todd:  seemed Yeah. 

Craig:  Seemed like this kind of, older, possibly gay guy. 

Todd:  Yeah. Overly concerned with his looks. Little flamboyant. 

Craig:  Yeah. Hilarious. And and he’s funny because he kind of half whispers to the camera, It’s those Chinese, they eat raw fish and they never closed their door. Yeah. And he says something like, I mean, if they would do feng shui or other cool stuff, that’d be one thing. 

Todd:  Oh, man. Yeah. He’s even got the he’s even got it wrong about the raw fish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just 

Craig:  this little interlude, but it it’s, it’s kind of a refreshing interlude, you know, it’s kind of a little bit of humor injected into all this insanity. But eventually we get back to the action where everybody ends up back together and the policeman who’s there, who still has communication with the outside, says, There may be an infection in the building. The health inspector is coming to take, blood samples from everyone. And once we find out everybody’s okay, then they’ll let everybody go. And that’s when they take the roll call and they find out that everybody is present except for the Chinese family has a grandpa who is is sick and disabled upstairs in bed, but he’s the only one who’s not present. And it’s funny that they make a big deal out of that, and it never really seems to matter. Like No. Does that Chinese guy ever show up? 

Todd:  I don’t think he does. No. It it makes me wonder if that wasn’t, like, cut out or something. Like, there’s maybe a cutscene Yeah. With him in it. And but there is another significant fact. And, again, I feel like I I saw it all coming. Like, I didn’t see it coming, but I I could tell when something significant was being said.   Like, I didn’t see the sequels, but I could tell, okay, the the sick dog, of course, that’s an alarm bell thing. And the other thing that, one of the guys say as they’re doing the roll call is that the top floor is a penthouse, but it hasn’t been opened for years because some guy from the grid rents it out and he’s just left it closed, he never comes. I thought, okay, we’re gonna end up at the penthouse by the end of this movie, and I wasn’t disappointed at all. So 

Craig:  Yeah. And and from there, I mean, everything just happens really quickly. The health inspector shows up in a hazmat suit, and of course, Angela and Pablo are following them around, and the inspector checks out the infected, and and the first thing that he does is he handcuffs them to their hospital beds, and and he injects one of them with something. But then as soon as that happens, one of the infected rears up and, bites the medical intern. HAZMAT guy, and I think it’s Manu, the firefighter, they run out of that room, and the health inspector closes the door and locks it. And the medical guy is still in there, and Angela is saying, We gotta let him out, we gotta let him out. And the guy says, No, he’s bit, and it’s spread through saliva, and we’ve gotta keep him in there. And, again, you know, if we’re if we’re gonna be critical of narrative, I would say that my only complaint is that the that cop and whoever else it was there were 2 people who had gotten bitten earlier on.   They were incapacitated for a good 20, 30 minutes before they woke up as man eating zombies. And and the health inspector says the reaction depends on the blood type and it’s unpredictable and we don’t have any way of predicting how quickly it will happen, how quickly the change will happen. But from this point forward, people start getting bit, and then 10 seconds later Yeah. They’re zombies. 

Todd:  That’s so true. Sometimes you don’t know. The other question I had was, how does he know so much about this infection? Was that ever explained? Was it about 

Craig:  the dog, 

Todd:  the vet clinic, the gut? 

Craig:  It’s about the dog. The, health guys, you know, they corner him and they’re like, what is going on? And he says, you know, this dog was brought into a veterinary clinic. It had some disease that was undiagnosable that we’d never seen before. Eventually it went into a coma. It woke up briefly afterwards, but it was, incredibly aggressive and it attacked all of the other animals in the shelter and it had to be put Todd, but the infection spread. And we checked the dog’s chip and it led us back to this building. And And so they immediately look to the mother who’s holding her daughter and the mother says, No, no, no, my daughter just has tonsillitis. It’s just tonsillitis.   And the guy says, Well, the disease is spread through saliva. And so, you know, we’re thinking if this little girl loved this dog, I’m sure she had some dog saliva on her at some point. So the the mother is saying, no. No. No. It’s just tonsillitis. And immediately, Jennifer, the 

Todd:  little girl, bites her mom’s face off. Another another case It’s another case of where she turned just a little too conveniently for the plot. 

Craig:  Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it’s it’s kinda silly that it happens exactly in that moment, but it’s exciting. And, you know, she jumps down and, you know, it’s it’s funny to watch child actors, you know. This little girl has just been very natural and sweet throughout, and now she’s supposed to be this, you know, rabbit zombie or whatever. She just kind of snarls at them and then runs up the stairs and, they run after her. And from that point on, I mean, it’s pretty much just chaos. The infected people who are back in the textile place are trying to get out.   They’re trying to keep them locked behind that garage style door. The the health inspector handcuffs the mother to the stair rail because she’s been bitten. She yes. Yes. 

Todd:  They even try that’s the best part. Actually, that was one of the best one of my favorite parts of the movie was when the guys are starting to get out of the textile part, and they realized they need to unshade the mother. Like, on the one hand, it’s like can’t. Like, why are you even bothering? You know that she’s gonna turn any minute now. Well and they can’t and, like, Angela’s trying to, like, pull her hand out of the haircut. Handcuffs. And and and I I suppose you would, 

Craig:  you know, that would be your humanity taking over, trying to help, but we, of course, know she’s a goner. And of course Yeah. The infected do get out and eventually, you know, just kind of attack that lady. And, and and from there, it it it basically is is just chaos. You know, the the the remaining people who are alive are running around trying to find sanctuary somewhere, and figure out what they’re gonna do. Meanwhile, these infected people are running all over the place, breaking down doors. And you know, the way that I just describe it, it sounds chaotic and almost a little silly, but I actually thought it was really scary. You know? And I think that the, the found footage aspect of it really added to that, to the suspense and intensity of it.   You know, you you almost feel like you’re there with them. You know, you feel that intensity. You feel that urgency. We we’ve gotta move. We’ve gotta we gotta do something. Just run. And I I thought it was good. I was on the edge of my seat at that point. 

Todd:  Yeah. And the fact that we’ve had these sort of jump scares earlier on in the midst of chaos Todd, with a guy falling down and the woman attacking. Later on, Caesar gets it in, I thought, a pretty shocking way as well. Amidst the chaos, even though there’s a lot of stuff happening going on, you still don’t know when some scary thing is gonna jump out and grab them, which is unusual, actually. You know, they didn’t ever really stop to these moments where they’re slowly artificially, you know, slowly prowling again through a quiet room like they have all the time in the world, you know, great around the corner, which you sometimes get in these kind of films. Really not until the very end when it when it makes a lot of sense, do they have this, you know, going on. And then, you’re right. It’s just it’s just absolute chaos.   It basically gets down to Mano, Cesar, Pablo, and Angela. The doctor was bitten. Cesar gets grabbed by the bit doctor, but not before he suggests running and getting the keys to an apartment that, maybe the, oh, the underground area, so that they can escape. There’s some underground something. So they go and run and have this hilarious, almost Harry Potter esque search for the keys, where they find, like, in the drawer, like, a giant ring of, like, a 1000000000 keys. But but by the time they find the keys, and I think it’s just, Angela and Pablo at this point. 

Craig:  It’s Angela and Pablo and Manu. The only reason that I say that is because Manu is kind of like this badass. Like, he’s taken down he’s taken down these infected left and right, and they have several encounters with them, and and he’s kind of the hero of the day. Ultimately, there’s an encounter where Angela says she gets grabbed by one of the infected, and and she said she’s crying. You just you don’t even see her on screen. She’s off. She’s out of frame, and she’s Craig, and she says, I got bit. I got bit.   And Pablo I think it’s Pablo. It’s either Pablo or Manu. I don’t even know if you can tell. One of them says, no, you didn’t. No, you didn’t. The fact that she maybe got bit, is not really significant in this movie, but it does pay off in the final sequel, because as it turns out, she for whatever reason, I don’t remember if they explained it or not, has some sort of immunity to this infection. And she ends up being the key to finding a cure for it. And again, it’s completely irrelevant to this movie and I have no idea if they had planned sequels or they were setting things up.   But it was just nice for me having seen those sequels to see those connections, and I and I appreciated that. 

Todd:  Oh, that’s interesting. 

Craig:  Yeah. Manu gets, attacked and and turns Todd, and it ends up just being, Angela and Pablo for the finale. 

Todd:  And I loved that shot where Angela and Pablo pop out because they’re going to grab Manu and they look down the staircase and Manu’s head pops up and he’s like, and you look Todd, the entire staircase is just full of these zombie creatures running to make their way up, but that was pretty freaky. And then, of course, she’s fumbling with all that. I mean, they decided there’s no way for them to go but up, so they’re trying to get into this penthouse. She’s got inexplicably, even though she has this huge handful of keys, she manages to find the right one just in time and go in. Yeah. It’s like the second one she tries. She’s got quite an immunity there, I’d have to say. Yeah.   Anyway, so they go into this apartment, and, the apartment is just it’s kind of what you’d expect. It almost looks like the the stereotypical serial killer apartment, where it’s just, paper newspaper clippings all over the wall and what looks like lab equipment and doctor material. 

Craig:  Lots of religious iconography. 

Todd:  Yeah. All kind of mixed together. And the lights, they I either they don’t try to find the white switch or the lights don’t turn on or they think the power’s out, but it actually isn’t. They’re just using the light on the camera Todd, to to look around, and this is that point, like you said, where the camera light became really important, and I thought very effective Todd, because we never get a very good sense of the wholeness of this apartment. We’re just seeing all these creepy little little bits and pieces. But it turns out that all these newspaper clippings and everything are related to this girl, this girl who was supposedly possessed, and somehow the Catholic Church got involved and tried to exercise her. And her, I don’t know if it’s uncle or or somebody that she knew, who ends up being the owner of this apartment, who we never do see, but who created and did all this stuff, is going was trying to fix her, somehow figure out what this infection was that he decided she had. And we learned all this, more or less, by her pushing aside some papers and some newspapers and stuff on a bench, and and she exposes a reel to reel tape player.   Yeah. And I’m thinking Very 

Craig:  evil dead. 

Todd:  I know. Like, where are we? Is this 77? Are we in a cabin in the world? Like, really? I’m kind of shocked that this woman even, like, knew how to press play on this thing and get it to work. I I grew up. I had a reel to reel player. I don’t think I could do it anymore. But, yeah, she plays it, and we kinda hear all the explanation more or less from the first person. You know, in a way, the movie reminds me a lot of playing like a Resident Evil video game or something like that where you got these little bits and pieces of footage from this this kind of stuff, these recordings. 

Craig:  Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely feels like a first person, video game. And I guess that there have actually been, some video games that were inspired by this with the first person point of view and stuff. But that tape, I actually I thought this was really interesting because we only hear bits and pieces of it and, it it talks about how this girl was possessed and then he talks about the voice on the tape talks about discovering some enzyme that he think is he thinks is going to be able to cure her. And then she fast forwards a little bit, and he’s like, uh-oh, bad news. The, enzyme didn’t work, and I’m afraid it’s infectious.   Now I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, and I don’t know that they ever, even throughout the course of the the the sequels, if they ever fully explain it because it’s kind of a mix of demonic possession slash, medical infection. What it sounded to me like on the tape, and I could be totally wrong listeners, if you’re listening at all. I I could be totally wrong on this, but this is my theory. What it sounded to me like was that this girl was infected and this guy was trying to find a cure for the infection, but instead of finding a cure for the infection, he somehow viralized the possession somehow. Yeah. And and then it it it started, you know, because he was trying to treat this girl in this building, you know, the the whoever it was, I think it was the intern who, you know, is kind of the super for the building, he said, you know, this guy owns that apartment, but it’s been closed up for 3 years or something like that. And as it turns out, it appears, you know, maybe it was closed up for 3 years, but he was up there with that girl all that time trying to work with her, trying to cure her. And when he was unable to, then somehow the infection started to spread throughout the building and that’s what started all this.   It’s interesting, you know, ultimately it’s really not all that important, but I appreciate the fact that they at least try to give us some indication of why what is happening is happening. And I don’t mind the fact that it’s left a little mysterious that we’re not sure that we’re not given, you know, we’re not given, okay, here’s definitively why this is happening. We just kinda get little bits and pieces, and I I think that adds to the mystique, and I appreciate that. 

Todd:  Well, and the fact too that the older woman and the Colombian girl, whatever, who they pretty well blew away in the apartment the next time that they go up to investigate the apartment, which happened earlier. They weren’t even there, suggests that there’s something a little more supernatural than just an infection going on, you know. So that question gets raised a little bit earlier on in the movie, even though at this point, you know, it’s still seems to be leaning more toward a medical explanation, it becomes a little muddled. And you’re right. That is that is nice to leave it that way. And wow, and the sequels don’t really explain it anymore, They just 

Craig:  Well, I mean, they they address it, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen them and I’ve only seen them once, so I I can’t say with any certainty. But, I I do know just having what I’ve read about, you know, it’s not entirely clear. There’s some, like possession demonic aspects to it, but it also does spread, you know, biologically. So I’m not exactly sure. Anyway, they’re they’re they’re they end up they’re in this penthouse, and and the zombies are out side, and so they’re looking around trying to find a way out. And out of nowhere, this trap door, this attic door falls down. I would have reacted like Angela who at this point is just freaking out. Like, it almost becomes a little annoying.   And, Pablo is he says, well we we’ve gotta check out the attic. You know, there’s nowhere else to go. And he’s like, I’ll just put the camera up there and and and swirl it around, and then we can bring it down and look and see the footage and see what’s up there. And, he does that, and it’s a very slow pan all the way around, and it finally, as it comes almost 360 degrees back around, it pans to somebody who’s obviously infected. It looks like a kid to me, but it was, you can’t really tell because it’s so quick. And who whoever or whatever it is hits the camera and breaks the camera, breaks the light on the camera so that they’re in complete darkness. This last 5 minutes of the movie, is incomplete darkness, and all we can see, he turns the night vision on on the camera. And that’s all we can see.   Eventually, they they realize that there’s some infected person in the apartment, and Pablo is trying to calm Angela down and say, be quiet. Be quiet. It’s so dark. They can’t see us. If they can’t hear us, they can’t find us. And that works for a minute, you know. But eventually, you know, as they’re trying to sneak away, one of them knocks something over and the infected person attacks. It gets Pablo, and so the camera just drops on the floor.   And then, we see Angela in the frame, of the camera, and she’s kind of crawling towards the camera. And this is the shot that they showed in the previews both for this movie and for the remake, which is kind of a crap thing to show in the preview because it’s the ultimate movie, the ultimate part of the movie. She’s crawling towards the camera, it’s all in night vision, and all we see is apparently somebody grabs her and just pulls her away, and then it cuts to black and that’s the end. That ending in the black, you know, in the darkness, I I thought was was good and and scary. It was a night vision camera, but you you could see so little. Like, you could only see, you know, what was directly in front of the camera. You couldn’t see anything in the periphery, and that was good. And I also read that, they filmed these sequences in complete darkness.   So the actors had no idea what was going on around them. So a lot of their reactions were natural or at least in part natural. You know, they knew maybe what their lines were and knew what the end game was, but they didn’t know what was going on around them. And, yeah, and it was it was effective. Overall, I liked this movie. I didn’t have a lot of expectations going in. I knew that I had liked some of the sequels. I haven’t seen part 2 so I don’t know if part 2 does the whole found footage thing.   But I saw part 3 and part 4 and they do not. They they do not do the whole found footage thing. I think that there may be some parts of the movies that, are are found footage. But for the most part, it’s just your your average cinematography. That works fine for those movies. Fans of this franchise do not like part 3. 

Todd:  Oh, yeah. 

Craig:  And I loved I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I think they they try to inject more humor into the third one. It takes place at a wedding, and all of the wedding guests at the reception start to turn, and your heroine is the bride, and so she’s running around fighting all of these zombies in her wedding gown. And, at at at 

Todd:  some point, there’s, like, a 

Craig:  a knockoff SpongeBob SquarePants zombie. Like 

Todd:  This sounds like a trauma film. 

Craig:  It it’s not that I don’t wanna say low quality. That’s not fair. Trauma does what tropa does. But, I would say, bigger budget. I’ll just say that. 

Todd:  Well, you know, I’ll tell you. I’m kind of a little played out on the whole found footage thing. But quite honestly, just like you, I really did like this movie. It was just different enough. It really held my interest. And again, I think a lot of that had to do with the context and the fact that it was all claustrophobic, you know, it all took place in this one location. It was the kind of place that’s more or less familiar to all of us, so you could kind of relate to all of it. It’s not like they’re wandering around in the sewers or, you know, they’re tearing away through the city.   It’s it’s apartments in an apartment building. And, you know, some found footage films are better than others. This is definitely, definitely better. Although, honestly, if I had seen this in the theater, I probably would have had to turn my eyes away at a couple different points. I don’t always get, you know, ill from watching these. Well, I actually, when I watched the very first Blair Witch with my wife, in the theater, I think she made it through 5 minutes of that movie, after things got going. And then she closed her eyes, she turned her head and would peek at the screen every now and then and couldn’t do it. And finally, when we left, she threw up in the bathroom.   Oh, no. So she even more is even more sensitive than I. But, you know, since then, a lot of these movies we talked about, oh, what’s the big j j Abrams one? 

Craig:  Cloverfield. 

Todd:  Cloverfield did a really nice job of bringing things stabilizing things every now and then, you know, and not making it too Craig, although that one did also get a reputation for making people sick. This one, it’s like they didn’t even care. Like the camera just whips around everywhere all the time. Even when it could be stable, it’s still shaky. On the small screen, it works really well for me. On the big screen, I think I woulda had problems with it. 

Craig:  Yeah. I can see that. And and I think that maybe you could speak to this more from a technical perspective, but I read that they didn’t build any sets for this movie. All of these, everything was filmed in real locations. And I felt like that made a difference. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  Because it it it felt claustrophobic and it felt real. It didn’t feel like we were getting point of view shots from a point of view that couldn’t happen. Do you know what I mean? Doctor. Yeah. 

Todd:  You’re right. 

Craig:  Doctor. It seems like in a lot of these, if it were taking place in a narrow hallway, we might get a perspective that you really couldn’t get in a narrow hallway. And, and this felt very real. I I mean, it it almost felt like news footage, and I think that the fact that they filmed it in real locations as opposed to sound stages made a big difference. 

Todd:  Yeah. And aside from the fact that occasionally, Pablo turns the camera around as he’s running away just to catch what’s what’s chasing him, More or less, everything was pretty motivated as far as where the camera was. Sure. There was even that moment or 2 where they dropped the camera or he would deliberately set the camera down to do something. Right. You know, they did that Cloverfield really well, as well. This this one also, again, I it never took me out of the movie. It was it was good.   Yeah. I’m glad that you recommended it. I had to I have to admit, I wasn’t really looking forward to it because because it was found footage, but, I was very pleasantly surprised. And like you, not completely on the edge of my seat, but definitely enthralled through the whole thing. 

Craig:  Yep. Yep. Me too. Thank you for listening to another episode of 2 Guys in a Chainsaw. If you enjoyed this episode, talk to us about it. Leave us some comments on our Facebook page or tell us that we’re big idiots who are completely wrong and have no idea what we’re talking about. We we enjoy engaging with you. You can find, this episode and all of our many back episodes on, iTunes and Stitcher.   You can find us on our Facebook page. If there are any movies that you would like for us to watch and talk about, please let us know. Otherwise, until next time. I’m Craig. And I’m Todd. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.