[REC] 2 (2009)

Hmm.  Well I'll be damned, [REC] 2 is actually better than the original.  Bigger budget, better looking picture and most importantly a more fleshed out story. 

The film opens with a group of SWAT team dudes gearing up to go inside the building at about the exact time the last movie was ending.  They go in, find all the blood and stuff from the initial outbreak.  Along for the ride is a whacked out priest who instructs them to go to the penthouse.  Once there all kinds of cray shit starts to happen.  Possessed children crawling on the ceiling, lots of blood, head shots, suicide, blowup doll destruction, hidden doorways, cages, mowing down possessed people with machine guns, nasty worm thing.  It's pretty cool.  At least the beginning and the end.  The middle part is kinda slow, but even then it never gets boring.

Worth a watch.  It's still filmed in that shaky cam way, but this time around it seems they tried to actually make it look like a FPS, so that's pretty neat.  Check it out.

Part 1 - [Rec] (2007)
Part 3 - [Rec] 3: Genesis (2012)
Part 4 - [Rec] 4: Apocalypse (2014)
Remake - Quarantine (2008)
Remake Part 2 - Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

LAWLESS (2012)

Three "lawless" brothers run moonshine off in the deep woods during the Prohibition.  Being "lawless" they use nothing but child labor to run the stills and only use the tears of the children, instead of water, to make the shine.  They also pass the time by raping everybody...wait, what?  Oh, they're not that "lawless" after all?  Well shit.  The only laws these "lawless" criminals actually do disobey are the manufacturing & selling alcohol and then getting violent when they have to.

Enough  about the misleading title.  The real story is about three good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm, makin' their way the only way they know how but that's just a little bit more than the law will allow.  There's also some stuff about the different women in their lives, but it all goes exactly as you would expect.  Actually the entire film goes pretty much by the numbers.  Mild violence, pretty women, potentially epic story material told with a pathetically average script, good acting by supporting actor Dane DeHaan, pretty scenery and a disappointingly small role by Gary Oldman.

When I heard about this film I was imagining all kinds of exciting gun battles, old timey slang and ultraviolence with a breakneck pace, but instead LAWLESS just putters along and never really goes anywhere.  Worth a watch, but just barely.  I know I'll never watch it ever again.  If you need me, I'll be in my room drinkin' some corn squeezin's.

[REC] (2007)

Ehh.  Mildly entertaining gimmick horror movie.  This time the gimmick is the shaky found footage camerawork that gets lamer each time I see it.  Anyway, a late night TV show called "While You're Asleep" is doing a episode on overnight firefighters.  Reporter Angela and her cameraman Pablo are filming the firemen doing stuff around the firehouse when a call comes in about a rescue at an apartment building.  When they get there, all kinds of shit starts going down including people biting other people and the Man surrounding the building and quarantining everybody inside to stay inside.  It would have been nice if somebody would have made a run for it only to get gunned down, just to show the audience that they're serious. If that did happen, it happened during one of my powerful yawns and I missed it.

There's nothing her you haven't seen before.  That said, it's not a bad film.  Just predictable and less fun than spending 78 minutes playing Left 4 Dead.  Shaky cam overdose, mediocre acting, predictable story (healthy people get bitten and a few minutes later they get all crusty looking and growling and chase people around), high school level special effects, main chick kinda looks like Justin Bieber, lots of talking, obvious low budget, darkness.  Worth watching, I guess, just to say you've seen it, but it won't change your life.  It would have been nice if the reporter chick had been more attractive.  If you need me I'll be on the rooftop of Mercy Hospital getting my asshole turned inside out by a Tank..

Part 2 - [Rec] 2 (2009)
Part 3 - [Rec] 3: Genesis (2012)
Part 4 - [Rec] 4: Apocalypse (2014)
Remake - Quarantine (2008)
Remake Part 2 - Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)