Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Ángela Vidal, the young television reporter who entered the building with the firemen, manages to make it out alive. But what the soldiers don't know is that she carries the seed of the strange infection. She is to be taken to a provisional quarantine facility, a high-security installation where she will have to stay in isolation for several days. An old oil tanker, miles off shore and surrounded by water on all sides, has been especially equipped for the quarantine.
[REC]⁴ Apocalypse abandons the found footage format that distinguished the earlier entries and shifts to a more conventional action-horror setup aboard an oil tanker. The result is a largely generic creature-feature that strips away much of what made the franchise distinctive. The plot is workmanlike at best — a quarantine thriller with zombie outbreaks and a rushed demonic mythology resolution — offering little suspense or originality. The acting is competent but unremarkable, with Manuela Velasco returning as Ángela without much new material to work with. Cinematography is functional, making reasonable use of the claustrophobic ship setting but never elevating it to anything visually memorable. The novelty is low: abandoning found footage in favor of a formulaic action-horror template makes this feel like a by-the-numbers sequel rather than a bold evolution. The ending attempts closure for the series but lands as muddled and unsatisfying, failing to deliver a meaningful payoff for the overarching mythology.