In terms of style, this sequel to Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's 2007 horror hit Rec is more of the same, with shaky POV camera-work, shadowy night vision scenes, and numerous mechanical jump scares, with just a touch of first-person shooter about it. However, I did enjoy this one marginally more than its predecessor thanks to a supernatural plot development that stops it from being just another predictable found-footage zombie/infected movie.In Rec², which continues where the first film left off, a heavily armed SWAT team enters the quarantined apartment building, accompanied by Ministry of Health representative Dr. Owen (Jonathan D. Mellor), in order to assess the situation. Once inside, it soon becomes apparent that Owen knows a lot more than he is letting on, and, when confronted by the soldiers, he spills the beans: he is a priest employed by the Vatican, and the outbreak is, in fact, a case of demonic possession spread through bodily fluids. His mission is to try and locate a blood sample taken from the girl who was first possessed in order to create an antidote.The first half of the film is told via the use of micro cameras mounted on the SWAT team's helmets, but halfway through, the action is replayed from the perspective of a group of teenagers who sneak into the building for a thrill. The introduction of Ángela (Manuela Velasco), the reporter from the original movie, allows for a further twist before the inevitable downbeat ending. Balagueró and Plaza keep the pace suitably frenetic and deliver some solid shocks and a few decent moments of splatter along the way (shotgun blasts to the head making quite the mess). They even throw in a bold sequence in which demonic 'doorways' are only visible through the use of night vision goggles (OK, OK, it didn't make a lot of sense, but I like the fact that they tried).Overall, not a vast improvement over the original, but still a move in the right direction. I'm interested to see where they take the franchise in REC³: Genesis.6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

With these films, I don't want to give away TOO many details in case the person reading this review hasn't seen it yet.While the first film relied heavily on atmosphere and telling a story through unfolding horrific events, building up to the last 10 minutes which exposed a huge amount of explanation while remaining some of the most intense moments in horror history.Rec 2 follows a similar pattern but spends more time expanding on the previous film's climactic ending throughout the film. The thrills take only a slight backseat at times to divulge a nice amount of exposition. This approach is actually slightly superior story-wise, but makes it slightly inferior to the original. However, both films stand as equal on quality level and are worth being viewed as 1 competent, coherent story among chaos.Unfortunately, the American bastardization of the original was followed by a sequel that holds nothing to this film, but that's another rant for another IMDb review.Overall, this is a 9/10. Near perfection for the horror genre, which saw an inspiring dose of revitalization in Europe after 2000.

To me, Rec was a pretty good film. I also enjoyed Rec 2, but the directors' lack of knowledge or sense towards certain things really turned me off... Most of the issues revolve around how the SWAT team or the specialty units operate. The SWAT members are supposed to be exceptionally TRAINED officers, but they behave like children that got their hands on weapons and gadgets. Whenever they fire their weapons, they do NOT control their fire. They keep firing for seconds. Half the time they even spray it wildly, and even against a stationary target 3 feet away. He ran out of ammo after firing twice, and even that's unreal, because real SWAT members would not have only a single clip for their weapon.The other problem with the SWAT team was that they had no tactical knowledge. They repeatedly sent out one man scouts. It's not a war zone, there aren't any bombs around, and people are not going to ambush them with heavy firearms, or at least they weren't expecting any, or they wouldn't have sent only 4 people. You don't hold a huge staircase with 2 people and send someone 2 stories down into an apartment where there are plenty of rooms and doors around. These kind of places are where you send MORE people, because they're much more dangerous and hard to cover. Logically, they should have moved as a team and went in together, with someone covering the exit. You don't even need training to have that much sense.What's just as horrible is how these people enter rooms. They actually step inside while looking in one direction, and take 10 seconds to rotate around for a full sweep of the room. If there was anything there, they'd be long dead. I understand that it's for the sake of the camera view, but it's really irking to see SWAT men walk around like they're cameramen.Aside from the SWAT team, the enforcement units outside are also severely lacking. They're performing a large scale lockdown, and they failed to notice that there is an entryway through the sewers. Actually, the logic around that is completely flawed. The door enters directly to a stairway in the textile shop, zombies have been in the shop, and they're not stupid. They could easily have escaped and out to the sewers in the course of a whole 70 minutes.I managed to get past those annoying eyesores and go on with the movie, there's not much else I would complain about except for the night vision, and this mistake is repeated in all 3 of the Rec movies I've viewed. When night vision is activated, everyone can magically see, even though they're not looking through the camera. They flail around randomly to pretend like they can't, but they continually demonstrate that they have perfect situational awareness, and know exactly where everyone is. It's especially apparent when the camera man faces them and talk to them. They pretty much look directly at the camera and nod as if they can see.Despite all these flaws(and some I have not mentioned), this was a decent film. It wasn't really scary, but I did enjoy the story elements.

So it starts as a laughably bad sequel and instantly you think to yourself "They dropped the ball on this one. REC 1 was great, this one has SWAT going into the building, it's going to be really chill." (<-Not spoiler, that's the first thing you see in the film.) Trust the creators. As the film goes on, the main characters, the plan and progression and events are completely changed and suddenly you sit there, curled up in a ball, a baseball bat in your hand, lights on everywhere and Pokemon playing on your laptop.It's terrifying. It keeps the heart of the first film but ups everything a notch. One of the few, rare, excellent sequels.Great atmosphere, great acting (seriously, great acting, it's stupidly easy to believe them) and great execution.9/10 because I had to keep the lights on for 2 days in a row and couldn't sleep. And because it is a bit too supernatural for my linking.For reference, The Ring made me flinch twice. Good film, just not as scary as this one.