REC

Lights! Camera! Action!

Teeth! Bites! Blood! Zombies! Run!

After Blair Witch and Cloverfield, this slick Spanish zombie yarn offers nothing new to an already overcrowded niche...but what's old hat is delivered with a gory gusto.

A TV documentary film crew led by an elfin presenter is assigned to a Barcelona firehouse where they will spend the night following the crew.

It's all fun and games caught on video - playing basketball, joshing in the canteen and laughing at the firemen's trousers...until a call comes through.

A dippy pensioner has run amok in a downtown apartment block and her sleepless neighbours have requested assistance.

However, what appears to be a simple case of restraining a ga-ga grannie turns out to be anything but when she chomps a gaping hole in a copper's neck.

Things get worse when the residents and the firemen find themselves sealed in the block by the police with no explanation for this strange turn of events.

Slowly the horrific realisation dawns that the old dear was carrying a nasty virus with a very short incubation period followed by a voracious bloodlust.

Directors Juame Balaguero (who made the underrated Darkness) and Paco Plaza may not bring anything fresh to the table but they do know the nuts and bolts of jolting terror.

Julio Fernandez gives a neat performance as the presenter - think any gabbling TV-am news ninny - while the lean running time makes for a series of short, sharp shocks.

The final reel is real eyes-behind-your-fingers type stuff with the filmmakers cranking up the audience's apprehension to I-really-would-rather-be-somewhere-else levels.

You'll be left a nervous rec.

Tim Evans