Review: [REC] 3: Génesis (2011)

[REC] 3: Génesis (2011)

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and some language

Score: 2 out of 5

[REC] 3: Génesis is a movie with an identity crisis. Instead of continuing the story of the previous two [REC] films, it tries to offer something different, a side story set in the same universe with allusions to their events but with an all-new set of characters and a much more fun and lighthearted tone. It's a movie that wants to invoke the Rule of Cool and deliver a kick-ass zombie slaughter extravaganza full of big, balls-out moments, and yet it's unwilling to wholly commit to the bit, frequently failing to indulge the full implications of its most over-the-top elements and often settling for the most boring versions thereof. It's not an outright bad movie, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of great scenes here, many of which on their own put a smile on my face. But overall, it's a far cry from the greatness of the first film, or even the flawed but enjoyable second one. I imagine that, if I were to rewatch this series, this might be the movie I skip in favor of just the first two (and possibly the fourth one if it's any good).

Instead of the apartment complex the first two movies were set in, this one takes place at a wedding party somewhere in the Spanish countryside, where the young couple Clara and Koldo are tying the knot and all their friends and family are invited. One of those family members is a veterinarian in Barcelona who was bitten on his hand by an angry dog before he showed up... and if you remember the part in the first film about the family who had to send their dog to the vet and whose daughter wound up infected by said dog, you know where this is going. Mayhem quickly erupts at the afterparty as the vet turns into a zombie and does what zombies typically do, leaving Clara and Koldo separated with two groups of survivors and fighting to survive the night and reunite.

The problems this movie has start with the tone. It's clear that this really wants to be a funnier and wilder film than its gritty, brutal predecessors, with such elements as an annoying copyright clerk (there to make sure that the proper royalties are paid for the songs played at the wedding) who exists only to be an asshole who gets killed off in spectacular fashion, a children's entertainer dressed as a trademark-friendly knockoff of SpongeBob SquarePants (side note: methinks that Paco Plaza may have had Thoughts about copyright law when he was writing this movie), a couple who snuck off to have sex and wound up missing the zombie mayhem in the main hall, Koldo and his friend suiting up in old medieval armor they found for protection, the sword used to cut the wedding cake later getting used to cut up the undead, and a badass sequence where Clara grabs a chainsaw and uses it to shorten her dress and then hack up a small horde of zombies. There's even a great scene twenty minutes in where the question of "why are they still filming this instead of just running for their lives?" is answered in a very memorable fashion -- by having an increasingly annoyed Koldo grab the camera out of the cameraman's hands and smash it, with the rest of the film dropping the found footage angle entirely and being a traditionally shot horror movie.

None of these more comical and/or badass elements, however, amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Clara's sudden display of zombie ass-kicking comes out of nowhere as the only moment in the film when she's ever that badass, as otherwise she's just as scared as the rest of the characters. Koldo and his friend's armor looks cool, but never actually does much to protect them. We learn that the zombies appear in mirrors as Tristana Madeiros, the original demonic possession victim and Patient Zero for this series' demon-zombie outbreaks, but this winds up barely used in the film, even though we get a shot of Koldo walking through a mirrored hallway that seems designed to set up precisely such a mirror shot later on. It felt like a film made of bits and pieces cobbled together into something resembling a coherent narrative, on one hand trying to be a kick-ass self-parody of the [REC] series and zombie movies more broadly but on the other also trying to tell a serious zombie horror story the builds on the previous films' lore, including focusing more on the religious/demonic nature of its zombie infection. There probably was a way to combine these two sides into an effective horror movie (George A. Romero did it quite a bit, as did Edgar Wright in a more overtly comedic way with Shaun of the Dead), but this film fails to stick the landing, with the humorous bits sticking out like a sore thumb.

If it were up to me, I would've stuck to the dark tone of the first two films and focused on the main elements of the film that actually worked, which were the drama and the protagonists Clara and Koldo. The newlyweds who get separated amidst the chaos of the initial outbreak, most of the film's drama comes from their efforts to reunite, and Leticia Dolera and Diego Martín make for a pair of very solid leads. I bought into their fight to survive, neither of them proving to be helpless but still being grossly outmatched running from and fighting zombies, and moreover, I bought into their romance, that these were two people who would do anything to be together and won't let a zombie apocalypse keep them apart. Clara's sudden display of unusual competence with a chainsaw may have come out of nowhere, but Dolera committed herself to the bit and sold it. The fact that many of the zombies Clara and Koldo encounter are their own family members is also used for some grim moments that weigh on them, whether it's Clara being confronted by her zombified mother or Koldo watching helplessly as security cameras record multiple people, including his cousin, his grandmother, and a bunch of kids, trying and failing to escape on a bus as zombies overwhelm them. The zombie mayhem, of course, is also top-notch, with Paco Plaza proving that he can handle a traditionally-shot horror movie just as well as found footage. The zombies feel like just as much of a menace as they did in prior films, the more open environments of the banquet hall dropping the claustrophobia of the apartment building in favor of providing enough room to have large hordes of the undead chasing our protagonists. If the previous two films were like a Resident Evil game brought to life, then this is like RE's looser, wackier Capcom stablemate Dead Rising, a series of games that's all about creative ways to kill zombies in a wide open world. It's not the best Dead Rising movie ever made, but I'll take it.

The Bottom Line

[REC] 3: Génesis isn't a bad movie, and I honestly wavered on whether to give this a 2 or a 3 out of 5. What tipped my hand towards the former is that I'd sooner recommend watching the first two [REC] movies instead, as while this film has its moments, it's plagued by an uncertain tone whose attempts at levity and awesomeness fall flat. I only recommend it for [REC] series completionists and diehard zombie fans.