7/2/2023 0 Comments Rec zombie2, stylistically and technically, is more of the same. Tristana wants out, to freely spread her demonic contagion. More intriguingly is that the infected share a connection with the source demon, Tristana, who’s taken up residence in plucky reporter turned survivor Ángela. The infected are revealed to respond to prayer and crucifixes, like the possessed. Owen is secretly a priest sent from the Vatican for a blood sample. This sequel sustains the same level of terror as the first film but expands the demonic mythology in exciting ways. All characters, at least the surviving ones, eventually converge and stumble upon a miraculously safe but shocked Ángela. Concurrently, the father of Jennifer (from the first film) persuades a firefighter to sneak him back into the building from an underground tunnel so he can bring her prescription medication. Hunt ( Jonathan Mellor) and a GEO team sent into the quarantined apartment building to control the infection. 2009’s 2, working more like a continuation than a traditional sequel, starts about fifteen minutes after its predecessor, this time following Dr. How do you top that in a sequel released two years later? By picking up almost immediately where ‘s end credits began. concludes with one brilliant payoff, in which a ghoulish Tristana ( Javier Botet) descends from the attic and drags a screaming Ángela off into the pitch-black darkness. She infects mice, which in turn spreads to a resident’s pet, and thus the outbreak is unleashed. It mutated and became contagious, so the agent sealed her up in the attic to die. They soon discover that they’ve entered the den of the outbreak’s source an agent of the Vatican brought a possessed girl, Tristana Medeiros, there to isolate the demonic enzyme within her. All alone in the penthouse suite, sole survivors Ángela and Pablo are desperate for a way out. Velasco, who would win a 2007 Goya for her performance, spent years as a TV presenter, which translated seamlessly to her character.Īs effective as the scares are, what solidified as a modern horror classic is that it changes the rules and mythology of the zombie outbreak by way of one unnerving final act. The sense of realism comes from the naturalistic way these characters interact, talk, and behave. That the infection sets in at different rates for different people gives an unpredictability that keeps everyone on their toes. The audience knows about as much as poor Ángela knows, and we learn more about what’s happening within the building as she does, all while dodging and fleeing from increasingly infected residents. Balagueró and Plaza envisioned video game levels of unrelenting dread, and they essentially created a rail shooter with the film. The handheld camera provides the necessary limitations not just in the viewer’s range of sight but in how much of the story we can absorb and when. What transpires, however, thanks to the found footage technique and sense of realism the filmmakers introduce here, is every bit of the visceral thrill ride Balagueró and Plaza intended. On paper, that sounds like a generic zombie setup that we’ve seen countless times before. There they find an incoherent, sickly woman that aggressively attacks an officer, and the event sparks a deadly outbreak that leaves them trapped thanks to an unexpected quarantine. Using that conceit, the film follows reporter Ángela Vidal ( Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, as they cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” What begins as a quiet, dull evening inside turns harrowing when the pair accompany firefighters Álex ( David Vert) and Manu ( Ferrán Terraza) on a call for a domestic disturbance at an apartment building. So, they decided upon a familiar horror story told through a single camera, treated almost as it’s if a character itself, relaying the narrative in real-time. The aim was to attempt to capture the same level of terror fans get from playing a horror video game. The idea behind 2007’s was born from Balagueró and Plaza’s desire not just to make a terrifying horror movie but to make the audience an active participant in the fear unfolding on screen. Looking back, the series took some daring risks and delivered a cohesive four-film series that evolved in surprising ways. Starting with 2007’s, this unique quadrilogy shook up the zombie formula and proved just how effective found footage could be at delivering visceral terror at least at the start.Īs with most franchises, each subsequent entry released saw diminishing returns, but that doesn’t speak to the creativity or innovative mythology created by filmmakers Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. It’s been five years since the stateside release of 4: Apocalypse, the closing entry to a standout franchise in modern horror.
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