Spain has a distinguished pedigree when it comes to horror and continuing that tradition, [REC] is one of the best horror films on current release outpacing even the scary delights of the well-respected chiller The Orphanage.

The story is a fairly simple one. A fly-on-the-wall documentary TV crew join an emergency on-call team one evening expecting just to be covering routine emergencies. That prediction appears to be confirmed when the emergency fire crew get a call to help rescue an old woman in distress. They go out to meet that call expecting her to have mislaid her keys or some sort of routine panic to be at the heart of it.

Things though are wildly different when they get there. The woman is not only in distress but howling, soon someone in the apartment block has gone to investigate and been murdered and what's more the outside police service begin sealing off the apartment block leaving its scared occupants with the deranged mutant old woman.

The TV crew find themselves unwittingly filming a situation where people become infected and appear to then become deranged into committing murder.

Just how many will survive and will they find a means of escape?

[REC] premiered at leading genre festival, the 40th Sitges International Film Festival earlier this year where it won the prestigious Audience Award, as well as the Critics Award, Best Direction and Best Actress Awards.

The film reunites horror directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza and secures their position as two of Spain's masters of the genre. This is Balaguero's fifth work in the horror genre after The Nameless, Darkness, Fragile and To Let. [REC] is Paco Plaza's third feature after Second Name, Romasanta and Xmas Tale.

This is a truly decent chiller which thrives off creating fear in the shadows and leaving you searching for a way out just like the rapidly frightened occupants. It also contains a satisfying ending which taking you into the world of night vision photography recalls greats like Silence of the Lambs but mixing it with a demonic element that recalls The Exorcist.

It's good, pure, horror entertainment that carries a decent scare factor but also adds with it, a healthy amount of black humour - the kind that makes you want to shout at the screen: 'no don't go that way' and 'you really don't want to look in there!'

Writer-directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza know what ingredients you need to make a decent horror film, then just pack the film with pace and a handheld camera (echoes of Blair Witch), and sure enough have come up with a good chiller that ticks all the right boxes in the fear stakes.