[Rec] (Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, 2007)

[Rec] makes effective use of the lo-fi technique that served The Blair Witch Project so well, with the video cameraman part of the action: this provides only a single vulnerable perspective on events, with any threat just outside frame left to your imagination, and naturally also means imperfect lighting, making for darkened spaces all around where again anything could be lurking. The story itself, with a TV crew following firemen on a routine call to a building where things rapidly go pear-shaped in biohazard zombie outbreak fashion, is purely perfunctory, but the execution is disciplined enough to have generated its own legion of imitators since, including the seemingly endless Paranormal Activity cycle and of course its own sequels too, with predictably diminishing returns.

6/10