Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse and today we're looking at Rec 4: Apocalypse, a Spanish film released in 2014.
As noted in the Kill Count for REC 3, the co-directors of the first two films took on parts 3 and 4 separately.
Paco Plaza directed REC 3 solo while this time around,
Jaume Balaguero took the helm for himself.
Just like the 3rd entry, part 4 abandons the franchise's found footage foundation -
but unlike REC 3's nuptial tangent, REC 4 continues the primary story of the series,
taking place immediately after the second movie ended,
but swapping out the apartment building for a big ole boat.
With the Tristana Medeiros story being continued,
that means the return of Angela Vidal, which I'm very grateful for.
The newlyweds were nice and all, and no doubt Clara was a badass with that chainsaw,
but Angela Vidal is someone we know and love,
who was our guiding force and narrator for that first terrifying movie.
Even if parts of this film feel a little well-trodden and cliche,
having her around as the main character again makes up for its weaknesses.
As with the rest of this series, REC 4 gets mighty bloody,
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Now let's set sail and see how many deaths we find
when we take a good hard look at this motherfucking boat.
 
The movie begins back in the apartment building in Barcelona,
where some special forces have arrived to save Angela Vidal and blow this mother up once and for all.
If only these dudes had watched the first two films,
maybe they'd have been looking out for infected people like Manu.
They take care of the demon zombie firefighter,
but an infected Cesar grabs and bites one of them before they're able to put him down.
Last reminder for this franchise, I don't double count victims like Manu and Cesar, who were counted in part 1.
I also wait to count infected people until they show confirmed signs of infection...
you know, most of the time, just, just go with it.
The dude who got bit is shot in the head by another officer named Costa.
 
Costa's also been bit, though, and since he knows the rules apply just as much to him,
he gives Guzman a gun and gets mercy killed with a HEADSHOT.
Guzman, a doctor, hears Angela Vidal upstairs and goes to save her
while other officer Lucas decides to cut his losses and run.
Upstairs, Guzman finds a fragile looking Angela
and asks her to trust him as the frame rate slows and we fade to black.
Come up on a TITLEE CARDDDD with a red porthole instead of a recording dot!
SHIPPAY!
Angela wakes up with her wrists tied down
as a doctor named Ginard tells her that everything is going to be okay,
thanks to the power of drugs. Mmm!
We get a nod to the franchise's found footage origins as security cams show us various locations,
landing on a room with Guzman, that doctor dude we met in the apartment building.
He doesn't know where he is right now, other than in a narrow nautical hallway,
and he's not the only one who's confused.
 
This unnamed woman ties REC 4 to REC 3, but just to save you an IMDB search,
the actor playing her was not, in fact, in the previous film at all.
Would've been kinda cool if she were, though.
Dr. Ginard takes Angela's blood sample to his boss on the boat, Doctor Ricarte.
It's the third time they've tested her for the infection, and for the third time, it comes back negative.
But if she's not infected, why she slippin out of her restraints
and bashing people in the heads to run away like that? Sounds guilty to me.
During her attempted escape, she runs into Guzman, who helps her get outside
only to find that they're stuck on a boat with a bunch of heavily armed soldiers.
Dr. Ricarte has Angela taken back to her room
as he tells Guzman that their suite life on deck is to protect the larger population from the virus.
 
Even though Guzman has tested negative for the infection,
Ricarte's not taking any chances after REC 3's wedding outbreak,
which left the woman we met earlier as the one and only survivor.
As the ship sails along, Guzman meets the people keeping it afloat -
Captain Ortega, who's sailing his last trip before retirement,
and Bridge officer Goro, who's got two fewer arms than I'd expect.
Both of them are annoyed that Ricarte and his soldiers
keep overloading the ship's power with their super secret medical lab.
There's also radio operator Nic, who's got great taste in tee shirts,
but that doesn't excuse the way he be spyin on Angela through the security cams -
he says he's a huge fan of hers.
 
Yeah, probably not though dude.
Rounding out the crew are Jesu, who works down in the engines, and the ship's chef Edwin.
Edwin keeps everyone on the ship fed,
including that unnamed wedding lady and Guzman's partner Lucas, who's also aboard.
High five for friend reunions! - er, fist bump? Yeah, we meant to do that...
Guzman tells Lucas what the Captain told him -
Ricarte & crew have shut down all radio communication and lifeboat operations
in order to make this ship a floating quarantine.
Hope y'all like bein on a boat!
Production spent 4 or 5 weeks shooting inside a real Russian fishing boat,
which was so freakin huge it had a full-on fish factory inside. Yeah, a fish factory. Their words, not mine.
Balaguero felt like a ship would be another good claustrophobic location
like the apartment building from the first two films, and he was right about that - a little too right.
 
Crew members like Pablo Rosso, cinematographer of all 4 REC films,
had a hard time working in the cramped spaces of the ship,
so after about a month of shooting on location,
they moved to a set where they re-built parts of the ship's interior for convenience.
Then again, they probably could've shot this thing anywhere and Pablo Rosso would've done it.
 
Dude's ride or die.
Nic begins to retrieve the footage from Angela's camcorder,
but since the harddrive's all busted ass, it's gonna take a while.
In the meantime, he's hacked into Ricarte's security cameras,
and shows Guzman inside their super secret lab below deck.
Inside the lab is a heavily guarded door,
but they have no idea what's behind it because there are no cameras there.
But I guess a camera wouldn't even be all that useful when the power keeps blacking out every night.
The power's back on by morning, when Guzman takes Angela to the bridge so she can meet the ship's crew.
Awkward ass Nic mentions that he's been trying to retrieve her camcorder footage, so she asks to see it.
But, Nic, dawg, maybe don't ask for selfies with her
while she's reliving the trauma induced from two back-to-back horror movies.
 
And no, she don't want your damn candy.
In the lab, the doctors discover that all their door guarding has done them no good -
cause they be missing a monkey right nyow!
They were using the monkey as a virus host to work on an antidote,
but during last night's blackout, someone broke in and let it loose.
In the kitchen, chef Edwin has a blast listening to music and meal preppin his little heart out -
until the infected monkey host shows up.
It's occasionally a bit too CG but it looks awesomely practical when it's on his back biting at him -
and when he shoves it into a pan on the stove to kill it!
Aw man, I hate seein a little monkey guy get fried but damn if I don't think that primate looks primo.
That is one good fake monkey getting killed right thyeah.
When the crew's lunch is delayed, Goro goes to the kitchen to see what's up.
Although Edwin keeps his back to him, Goro finds a tray full of delicious mystery meat -
wait, yo, that's a literal monkey's paw in there.
I don't care how good that sauce tastes, no one would realistically be eating from that tray!
But, we need the infection to spread somehow,
so a bunch of nameless soldiers and doctors chow down on it offscreen,
ensuring that one pain in the ass kill count is coming my way.
Before eating, Lucas goes into the kitchen and finds Edwin fully infected and nasty right now -
and I don't think locking him in the fridge like that is gonna help the guy stay fresh.
Lucas stops the named characters from eating any of the food and tells them the chef is infected.
If only he could've stopped Goro, who's not feeling great after that meal, right as the ship sails into a big storm.
Dr. Ricarte arrives in the cafeteria
and is ready to test the antidote they've developed from the monkey host on Edwin.
They taze him down and needle him in the neck, but all that does is makes his skin straight bumpin!
Clearly, the antidote's a bust, cause that guy still looks like shit,
so it's back to the drawing board for the doctors -
they know it's up to them to stop this virus and save themselves.
 
We see a few infected and dead people on security cams as Nic clicks around
and realizes things are gettin pretty fucked.
Although Ricarte tells the others to stay in the cafeteria,
they don't feel like waiting around as things get even more fucked.
They arm themselves with a bunch of knives from the kitchen
and head for the bridge, hoping Captain Ortega will help them.
Sounds like a plan, as long as they don't run into any trouble along the way.
 
Shit. I guess trouble ran into them.
It's an infected solder who attacks them pretty aggressively
until Guzman is able to put the guy down with an ice pick to the head and a gunshot for the double-tap.
In the engine room, Jesu is keeping this ship afloat
when an infected soldier appears and attacks him at full speed.
Jesu beats the dude away and gives him a little steam shower
as upstairs, another infected dude jumps out and knocks Lucas to the ground.
The parallel fights get pretty wild, with another infected monkey joining in for good measure,
until Jesu stops his attacker with a wrench and Guzman puts down theirs with a gun.
Don't forget the monkey, dude! There ya go. Good job!
During the commotion, the woman from the wedding disappears, so Lucas separates to look for her.
He finds a body that I don't know if I've counted already, so here you go,
and takes its gun as he heads out to find her.
Guzman and Angela get to the bridge,
where they have Nic do some cliche hacking in order to see what the doctors have been up to.
They find a file on Medeiros, a name Angela recognizes from the Penthouse newspaper clippings,
and everyone gets brought up to speed on the whole viral possession and Vatican thing -
something Ricarte knows plenty about, since it turns out he had been Tristana Medeiros's original doctor.
Ricarte and the other doctors are actually looking at Tristana Medeiros right now -
on the footage from Angela's camcorder, which has finally been fully recovered.
They watch as Tristana transfers her possession to Angela with a sloppy makeout slug.
 
They surmise that the parasite has been controlling Angela but keeping her system immune from infection.
That's why she keeps testing negative.
The POSITIVE news is that if they can get that slug out of Angela, they might be able to make a proper antidote.
Lucas finds the wedding woman,
but you can already tell from the way she's being filmed that she's infected as all hell!
Let's get that confirmed, shall we?
There we go.
*demon zombie roar*
All right, lady, we know already, calm down.
Lucas quickly deals with her but then, just as quickly,
6 more infected dudes appear and chase him through the narrow hall.
He just barely escapes them, and locks em behind a door.
He's found by Dr. Ricarte, who uses the young officer to gain access to the bridge.
There, he and his toadies announce their plans to cut Angela open so they can have her tummy slug.
There is some predictable resistance to the idea.
But Ricarte appeals to Guzman, doctor to doctor, and promises him that they'll let Angela live,
so Guzman acquiesces and the others get to work strapping down Angela to extract dat demon worm.
They're unable to find the parasite or start
the procedure, though,
before an infected Goro busts out of the bridge's bathroom, making a chaotic situation even chaoticer.
Goro bites Dr. Ginard as Captain Ortega peaces out,
and amidst this mess, Angela escapes too, getting by with a little passive help from Nic.
Out on the deck 4 more infected dudes growl and run around,
either just for the fuck of it or as they chase after Captain Ortega.
The editing makes it hard to tell.
It's also unclear what exactly happens to Ortega,
but I'll put him on the Kill Count as a suicide from jumping overboard.
Again, it's not explicitly shown, but I'm almost positive that's what happens, since we never see him again.
The soldiers on the bridge shoot down Goro before turning their attention to Dr. Ginard and his bite wound.
Ginard says they can make an antidote in time to save him, but as we all know in 2020,
vaccines just don't come out that fast, so they execute him with an easy peasy gunshot.
Ricarte and his soldiers head out to find Angela, who's running around below deck with a fireaxe,
disabling all the security cameras so the soldiers can't see where she is.
Ooh, and she got a scalpel, too? We love a dual-wielding queen.
As with the other films of this franchise, REC4 was a very physical movie to make -
just take it from Guzman's actor, Paco Manzanedo.
 
But the physicality never seemed to be an issue for Manuela Velasco,
who was in, quote, "plena forma" for her return to the role of Angela Vidal.
 
She passes 2 dead bodies that I'm not sure if I've counted before,
so, doing that now for the hell of it,
as Nic radios through one of the corpse's walkies to tell Angela he'll help her navigate through the ship.
Using the security cams she HASN'T knocked out yet, Nic guides Angela to where Ricarte is.
She pulls him aside with a scalpel and tells him he's wrong about her being infected -
or at least, he'd better hope so, cause she puts her mouth where her mouth is and bites him on the hand.
Ricarte goes back out to the hallway where the last doctor guy gets jumped and killed by 3 infected dudes,
who are also able to kill the last soldier guy after Ricarte locks him behind a door to save himself.
Ricarte gives himself a blood test as Nic gives Angela the secret code to get inside the lab.
 
Ricarte's test results are negative, which means Angela is clean -
so it's not a parasite inside her holding a scalpel to his neck.
It's just her badass self, wanting him to tell all the soldiers aboard to leave her the hell alone.
Might be hard to give orders to a bunch of demon zombie soldiers, though.
Lucas and The Guz Man go to a hatch full of fishing equipment that they plan to use as weapons -
namely, a couple of spearguns but also an outboard motor, nice.
They get back to the bridge, where they decide that Guzman will go help Angela in the lab
while Lucas and Nic go to the engine room and get this ship running right, so they can finally head home.
When Guzman gets to the lab, Angela realizes what's happened.
Guzman got the lab access code from Nic, then snuck in during the power outtage to let the monkey host free.
And why would he do such a reckless thing? Because the demon worm's inside HIM now -
it transferred itself from Angela to Guzman back in the apartment building,
right after he found her and the movie faded to black.
Not sure why she wouldn't remember that happening, but, uh, whatever.
Ricarte's unable to follow this shit either, so he throws his hands up and quits,
initiating a self-destruct sequence in an effort to keep the virus from getting off this ship.
A 20 minute timer begins as Guzman reveals that Angela was right -
he is, in fact, demon virus HQ right now, and he'd like to go do demon virus stuff,
so howabout she take a trip into this cargo hold?
Down there, she finds cages full of bloody animal remains,
cause this is where the doctors had been keeping all their test monkeys.
And sounds like a lot of them are out and about now, crawling all over the place.
As Angela begins climbing a ladder out of there, Lucas and Nic run into an especially brawny infected beefcake.
Who the fuck is this guy, zombie Batista?
The big boi runs at them but Lucas puts him down with the motor,
mulching his head with the whirring blade until his skull just up and explodes, awesome!
They get to the engine room and try to figure out why the ship's not moving.
Well, probably because their engineer Jesu is an infected demon zombie!
Not sure why we spent a few scenes with this character when, in the end, he really didn't do too much.
They put Jesu down with a spear to the head
only for another zombie bastard to appear, and then another nother one.
Man I hate how all these dudes are bald, I can't tell any of them apart - it's fuckin Alien 3 all over again!
With Nic frozen in fear, Lucas is overpowered by the zombie who bites out a bunch of his neck flesh.
And I'm just counting Lucas now since we never see him infected later.
The lights on the ship go out again,
and SOMEHOW Nic's able to escape without the zombies ever coming after him.
Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Nic runs into Ricarte,
who says they should take this inflatable raft and that outboard motor and blow this pop stand.
But Nick refuses to abandon Angela, so he knocks Ricarte out and takes the raft for himself.
If Angela wants to escape this ship,
first she'll have to escape a bunch of demon monkeys who are chasing her through chutes and ladders.
She very fortunately falls right in front of Nick, and, thinking fast,
aims the outboard motor up towards the air duct
so all the infected monkeys run into the blades and kill themselves.
May look a little CG but, I mean, I can definitely say this was something I haven't seen before.
A couple more infected dudes appear, but Angela and Nic lock them behind a door.
With only 6 minutes left until detonation, they've got no time for distractions like that.
Aw, what did I JUST say, Guzman?!
They don't have time for your bullshit!
The demon-possessed doctor attempts to swap the soul slug back into Angela's body,
but Nic gives her the speargun, and she uses it to shoot Guzman in the neck -
killing the human host that this idiot parasite just went back inside of. Stupid bug.
The demon worm was the first animatronic ever used in the REC series,
created by the franchise's perennial effects artist David Ambit.
The inner workings of the worm were covered in what looks like pantyhose
before they put it inside its final fleshy cover. Pretty gross!
Ambit also did make-up for all the infected folk on the ship, alongside Lucia Salanueva,
who, honestly, just from this one shot, I ship with Manuela Velasco.
Nick and Angela run out to the deck where
a whole host of zombies come at them in the rain.
But guess what?
Just like with REC 3, I'm giving up on the impossible counting job here.
There's no way all these dudes are new infected fuckers, so I'm just calling it quits.
Don't like it? Find a new Kill Counter!
They make it to the stern of the ship, where Nick tosses the inflatable raft into the water below.
Angela swings down and does a backy flop into the water, and Nick jumps in after her with the motor.
They both climb aboard the raft and start the motor up, and it takes them away from the ship
right as the detonation sequence goes off, killing all those zombies I've already counted as well as Dr. Ricarte,
who I HADN'T counted yet. So, onto the list he goes.
Notably, the explosion does NOT kill the demon worm,
which just found a new home inside a little fishy boi.
The movie ends with a mid-credits sequence showing that Nick and Angela had made it back to land,
so, hey. At least SOMEONE in this series got to live.
How many people could've really used a lifeboat in Rec 4? Let's find out and get to the numbers.
 
Safety first.
 
By my count, 41 people were killed or infected in REC 4 - though, obviously, I gave up in the end there, didn't I?
If only I had a crew roster, Return of the Obra Dinn style.
With a runtime of 95 minutes, that left us with a victim on average every 2.32 minutes.
I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for Coolest Kill to the infected Big Boi killed by the outboard motor.
Love a good head esplody.
Dull Machete for lamest kill will go to, ah, I dunno, the security cam guys? Yeah, the security cam guys. Sure.
And that's it. Rec 4: Apocalypse came out
in 2014 and is the final film of the REC series.
Next week I'll look at the sequel to Quarantine, the American remake of Rec, but until then
I'm James A. Janisse.
This has been the Kill Count.
Thanks a lot for watching The Kill Count for Rec 4: Apocalypse. I wanna thank some Patrons, like
William Aaron Kenney,
Alex Furness,
Anthony Wilson (Just_A_Native12),
Jarrod Green,
Aaron Messick,
Danielle Santana,
and Jessica Jenkins
Alright, we're done with the REC series, so you don't have to hear me try to speak Spanish anymore.
I know I'm not the best at it, but I tried!
Thanks everyone! Be good people.
