REC 3, GENESIS

Spain, 2012, 80 minutes, Colour.
Leticia Dolera, Diego Martin.
Directed by Paco Plaza.

REC 3, Genesis moves away from the main claustrophobia of the first two REC films. They were commercial successes, using the Blair Witch Project device of someone behind a camera filming everything that was happening, no matter how improbable or frightening. Both of those films involved a journalist, a fire brigade, and authorities trying to get into a building where people were becoming infected with a mysterious virus and turning into zombies.
These films or remade in the United States with the title, Quarantine.
While the latter part of this film is also claustrophobic, it spends the first quarter setting up a couple and their travels around the world, their engagement and the preparations for a wedding. Nothing frightening at all. The ceremony goes on, the priest officiating.
However, one of the guests has an infection which takes over and he becomes zombie-like, attacking other guests. Instant chaos ensues. Guests stumble over each other, tables are overturned, bride and groom are separated. In the meantime, the official photographers keep filming.
Survivors try to escape, locking themselves in rooms away from the celebration. Others get up into a shaft in the ceiling. What follows is expected. Various people continue to be bitten, there are violent attacks by the survivors on the zombies. Husband and wife know that the other is safe and spend some time trying to get to each other. Gradually a lot of the group’s survivors are also overtaken as are a couple who had been slinking away from the wedding for a sexual encounter.
Ultimately, husband and wife tried to escape from the building, only to find it surrounded by plastic, exit impossible, National Guard outside with guns. The husband and wife are infected, going berserk, and are killed by the National Guard.
Which means that the film is another addition to the growing number of films with handheld cameras, allegedly using realism to film a horror story. It also means that it is another addition to the living dead, zombie genre.
What distinguishes this film from others is indicated by the title. The officiating priest has a bigger role than might have been expected, with an apocalyptic end of the world mentality, he quotes the book of Genesis, chapter one, the story of creation. He has a sequence where he survives, recites this chapter of Genesis out loud which seems to fix all the zombies in emotional state. It is a kind of temporary exorcism. However, the screenplay then forgets about him and, presumably something does happen to him, because the zombies go into action again.
It was directed by Paco Plaza, co-director, with Jaume Balaguero, of the other two films, who acts as executive producer.