Friends and family are gathered together for the wedding of Clara (Leticia Dolera) and Koldo (Diego Martin), and we watch the wedding unfold, lensed by a relative (Alex Monner), as well as a videographer named Atun (Borja Gonzalez Santaolalla) who is apparently in love with the term ‘cinema verite’ (either that or it’s the only cinematic term he knows and is a complete fraud). Unfortunately, during the reception, an uncle suddenly takes a chunk out of someone’s face and the gory zombie wedding buffet commences. But the happy couple haven’t had time to consummate the marriage yet!
The “[REC]” series continues to do damage to the terrific original with this completely unengaging, uninspired third film. Directed by Paco Plaza (co-director of the previous films and the underrated werewolf flick “Romasanta”), who co-writes with Luiso Berdejo (who also co-wrote the original), if all you want are flesh-eating zombie-like creatures, then you might enjoy this. The makeup is really, really good and there’s a great chainsaw to the head bit and an amazing split in half moment. But I was bored out of my mind, because the film offered nothing else of interest and absolutely nothing happened for at least 20 minutes. It was like a real wedding, except in that case you usually have some real connection to the people getting hitched, and thus a reason to care.
For the most part it is mostly unwatchable due to the unfortunate conceit of being largely shot by a crap wedding photographer, something that also plagued “Cloverfield”. I’m sure most wedding videos are shot in a much more stable way than this. What annoyed me most about this is that they had another, more professional character around who could’ve done a better job of shooting the footage (The ‘cinema verite’ guy). Eventually things end up a mixture of the shaky-cam, night vision, and non-first person, making one wonder ‘why bother?’. The first film was a first-person horror flick, but it wasn’t shot in nauseating fashion at all because it was shot from the POV of a professional news cameraman who knew how to keep a steady hand. It also gave us an absolutely adorable protagonist who we were happy to follow throughout the film. None of the characters (and there are too many) are worth a damn, except maybe the dopey SpongeBob Squarepants wannabe. The film seems to switch between characters so often that it’s hard to get a handle on who the lead protagonist even is.
The attempts at humour are also pretty silly, not to mention destructive to any attempts at building tension or fright. I mean, why take a chainsaw to your wedding dress when you can just tear it yourself? Oh, because it’s funny? Is it? The film has a tragic and bloody ending, but since I didn’t give a damn about the characters, it was hard to care. I also have no idea why the 80s song ‘Eloise’ is played throughout the film. If there’s one 80s song that should’ve stayed buried, well there’s plenty, but this was one of ‘em.
OVERALL SUMMARY
I’m sorry, but this series has officially bottomed out for me. I was bored brainless. I’ve entirely lost interest in the series. I wish they just left it at one terrific film.
