This third movie basically wipes the slate clean, but fails to replace it with anything other than some nice bleak humour. I am a fan of bleak humour (and there is a difference between bleak and dark, alright?) but so far this series has been much more than just laughs, and I expected more.
Actually, I'll go on about bleak humour for a bit, I think. Just skip this paragraph if you can't be bothered listening to my shite. "Shite". See, that's part of my point. Shite is to shit what bleak humour is to dark humour. Everyone knows dark humour. Dark humour can range from making jokes about killing people to jokes about how Smurfs procreate (yes I'm looking at you, Donnie). Bleak is when there's no hope left, or if there is, it's so distant as to not get overly concerned about. I hope this doesn't sound too patriotic, but it's a kind of comedy that, in my experience, is found more frequently on this island, and of Britain, the specifically bleak shite is found in larger amounts in Scotland. I'm so proud. No, I am - really. Bleak is dark + hopeless. It comes with a specific attitude that it's hard to describe, yet easy to spot. At the moment it's walking home past the flat from the pub (football was on today) singing 'Flower of Scotland' without actually saying any words. I've never thought of myself as being really, properly, Scottish, but that's my loss, and I do love it here.
Um yeah, so... Zombies, right. There were zombies in this, obviously, and the build up was actually enjoyable for one. The movie opened with a cheesy montage of these two wedding dorks, before cutting to the wedding itself. It's a big do, with a massive house and gardens and a ballroom and food and tables and everything. I bet they even had those little sausage rolls. Love em.
I'm not sure weather or not I like weddings. On the plus side: free food and drink , you get to wear a suit, there will probably be dancing. On the negative: you have to essentially be an unpaid extra in the concluding scene of someone else' romance movie, a lot of family will be there (and you won't know who 30-45% of them are), you have to sit through an outdated and somewhat pointless ceremony for one of the least interesting gods (sacrifice something, will you?) Watching a wedding full of strangers talking in Spanish is quite fun, though. No anxiety, and a nice noise instead of irritating communication. All the actors, even the extras, look so natural in their rolls, too. It could really be a home movie, it's great.
The zombie part is not so good. Early on we get an ominous dog bite on an uncle's arm. What annoys me so much about this, though, is that there's nothing to link it to the continuity of the first two films. The zombies aren't that scary, either. They're basically just normal zombies - the whole religious aspect that I like the '[REC]' series for is only referenced in passing, when a church guy reads the bible out over the loud speakers to render the zombies immobile (apart from that one zombie with the broken hearing aids).
There was plenty of laughs though. The literal knight in shining armour was smirk inducing. I think my favourite character was Spongejohn (copy write issues) who is the children entertainer who is naked underneath his suit. I dread to think what happened to all the kids he was looking after, who we never see. Actually no, I don't care.
That one of the few initial survivors was the royalties reporter was good. He became known to the others as "Royalties", and it's nice that he had a moment of badassery as he wails on some zombified aunt before he gets killed five seconds later.
I also liked the professional cameraman, who was clearly really enjoying the kid's attention as he kept spewing out cameraman jargon. His death was one of the few that made me sad (the end didn't really surprise me, I mean no one survives a '[REC]' movie).
All in all not a bad zombie movie, but not a great one, and for a [REC] movie it was terrible. The biggest mistake was not following the found footage theme (where the movies get their name, come on). As well as that, though, they took the story that had been interlaced between the last two movies so perfectly and threw it out the window. Not cool.
[REC] 3: 33.1