[REC]

[REC] doesn't theorize found-footage; it weaponizes it. Balagueró's steady-cam methodology—handheld only when vertigo matters—transforms a Barcelona apartment block into a pressure cooker where genre mechanics override character psychology. The film operates on cumulative dread rather than jump architecture, each floor a tightening vice. Where American found-footage would cut, spin, or show restraint, [REC] sustains the claustrophobia, the camera's inability to escape mirroring the audience's own imprisonment. The viral mythology arrives almost incidentally; the real horror is spatial, not supernatural.