"Death Video" is a thrilling pseudo-documentary that shows sudden chaos and fear through the unexpected of a news interview. In this film, directors Jaume Panagairu and Paca Brazza use superb camera and choreography skills to transport the viewer into a world full of accidents and dangers. The film not only captivates people through its tense and exciting plot, but also deeply reveals hesitation, ignorance and confusion through the presentation of symbols of the lower strata of society.
The story begins with a little girl infected with an unknown virus, followed by a series of horrific scenes, with the audience following the female journalist Manula Wallasco and the photographer to witness the madness of the infected. As the plot develops, the building is sealed, and the isolation and "destruction" measures of ** make the situation even more out of control, and the audience seems to feel the spread of this despair and fear.
The film left a deep impression on the audience through the desperate protection of the firefighters and the final gloomy ending. At the same time, through the news clippings and related clues that appear in the film, the audience can get a glimpse of the story and explanation behind it, adding more mystery and helplessness.
Looking back at the pseudo-documentary frenzy of the year, while this type of format was friendly to creators, it was not easy to put a lot of effort into telling the story. As one of the classics of the time, "Death Video" successfully captured the audience's attention through the suspense and hints of detail in the prelude. The film made a lasting impression on the audience and became a classic of the era.
After the success of the director's first work, Death Video, he filmed sequels one after another, but objectively speaking, these sequels were inferior to the first in terms of story creativity and audience feedback.
In the third "Death Video: Origin", after a wedding is destroyed by an infected person, the escape of the newlyweds becomes ridiculous, and the filming techniques of pseudo-documentaries are also broken, making the plot of the groom kissing the bride even though he knows that he will be infected seems a little awkward, and the plot becomes like a plasma film.
In the fourth installment, Death Video: Apocalypse, the director retrieves the heroine of the first installment, reconnects the storyline, and sets the scene on the Atlantic Ocean. By creating a series of misunderstandings, the virus successfully spread on the ship. At the end of the film, suspense is deliberately created: in the depths of the ocean, a school of fish swims and eats the body carrying the virus. If you make "Death Video" four films in a row, you may find that the director's thinking has become bizarre. He plans to shoot a side story outside of the main line of the first part, but whether it is to postpone the plot setting of the first part or start a new story, he can't explain the origin of the virus.
In addition, the theology mentioned in the first and second parts has become science in the fourth part, and this plot shift is a bit confusing. The director tried to find a different way to create a Spanish occult legend that was different from the American "zombie story". He leaves enough hints for the audience in the camera, from the news report in the first part to the dedication of the priest in the second part, to the recitation of the Bible in the third part that makes the "sick" stand still in fright.
However, when filming the follow-up parts, "Death Video" seems to have become "I want to tell you everything, but I'm going to deliberately keep something for you to guess", which makes the whole series seem a little awkward. In 2014, the word-of-mouth reputation of Revelation, the fourth installment of Death Video, finally made the series seem to be at a standstill.
Each story is a new character, and yet they are still related to the previous one, which attracts the viewer to continue ** and try to explain the doubts left by the previous one in the next one. People's perception of pseudo-documentaries eventually returned to "tradition": when they talk about ghosts, they talk about ghosts, and when they talk about science, they talk about science. Repeated horizontal jumps are too much of an overstep. What's more, the entire series turned into a subjective perspective film that nominally held a camera and claimed to be a "pseudo-documentary"?
Objectively speaking, the quality of any single film of "Death Video" is remarkable, but the "series" and "postponement" ultimately make the audience, including the director himself, feel at a loss and confused. In particular, the lack of a pseudo-documentary's original very unique shooting angle made this masterpiece that had been remade by Americans end with regret.