Just when you thought it was safe to go back into your super-rabies-infested apartment building in Barcelona, directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza bring the horror back in a sequel to the groundbreaking [REC]. This time, we see more of the horror from a couple different perspectives, and even though it’s shakycam with subtitles, it’s easy enough to follow, even with a few drinks in you.

Being a heavy horror fan is a tough gig. Most producers look at horror as a quick buck genre, a franchise to be used, abused, ridden hard and put up wet to make a profit. They don’t really care too much about putting out quality product, instead they just opt for product. Or at least that’s how it seems. 2010, to me at least, felt like one of the weakest years on record for horror. I thought last year was bad, but then the past 350 some odd days happened. I’m pretty confident I could say that this is the worst year for horror since the birth of Film School Rejects. It felt that bad. Regardless of my own disappointment in the movies this year, and in myself for missing a few releases, I scrapped the bottom of the barrel barren and plucked out ten (plus one!) [that means 11] horror movies that aren’t complete wastes of your time. Then again, you might just be better off buying all the Roger Corman Cult Classics for sale from Shout! Factory.

Picking up where the original left off, [REC] 2 offers a bevy of first-person scares and moments rife with tension. It’s an admirably efficient horror exercise with an in-your-face, down-to-business sensibility that never lets up. The picture lacks the fully-rounded, satisfying sense of a narrative arc introduced and explored, but it provides a fine dose of sheer visceral entertainment. Shot in the Blair Witch/Cloverfield handheld style, the picture forgoes exposition to send a new team into the sealed off apartment building overrun with zombies, into which (in the original) a TV reporter and her cameraman descended, never to return. The new, rather brainless squad consists of a medical officer (Jonathan Mellor) hiding a secret and a SWAT team.

When he reviewed it at Fantastic Fest last year, our own Cole Abaius called [REC] 2 a “near perfect” horror movie. It’s the kind of movie that I won’t even see because it’s so terrifying. I even had to close my eyes during this red band trailer…

This week’s Culture Warrior talks fake movies that look real but are fake, from Paranormal Activity to Blair Witch to old people getting in it with garbage.

Coming off of the sealed-off apartment of REC, the story begins mere moments after the last film ends as a S.W.A.T. team prepares to enter the building with a mysterious man from the Health Department. What they find is the truth behind what’s been going on and, of course, a ton of still-starving victims of the virus chomping at the bit for human flesh.

Paranormal Activity follows the Hitchcock 101 school of filmmaking like it’s scripture: show as little as possible and let audience imagination fill in the rest. It’s a rule most horror films could implement a bit more, and it works in this film to an astoundingly effective degree.

We’ve been training all our lives for this, and it’s finally here. Fantastic Fest 2009 promises to remove our eyeballs, pour blood, sex and ninja moves all over them and then shove them right back in our face. These are the 20 films that have us most excited about that upcoming amateur surgical procedure.

Here in Austin, the anticipation is high — everyone is talking, talking about movies. Not just any movies, but the sweet selection of genre, foreign and otherwise badass films that will be hitting the screens of the Alamo Drafthouse later this month when Fantastic Fest 5 gets under way.

The Toronto Film Festival paints midnights red with zombies, flesh-eating cheerleaders, badass bitches and Tony Jaa.

A lot of 2′s are coming down the pipe in the horror world. Remakes? Sequels? Little column A, little column B? Either way, some first look pics of both films are now on the interwebs.