Tristana Medeiros

Tristana Medeiros
REC character
Tristana before the possession
First appearance	REC
Last appearance	REC 4: Apocalypse
Created by	Jaume Balagueró Paco Plaza
Portrayed by	Javier Botet
Information
Aliases	La Niña Medeiros Medeiros girl Menina Medeiros
Species	Demon Possessed human being
Gender	Female
Status	Deceased
Cause of death	Head blown off by shotgun

Tristana Medeiros Da Souza, known in Spanish as La Niña Medeiros is a fictional character and main antagonist of the REC film series. Created by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, Medeiros Girl was introduced in the first film and had an expanded role in REC 2. In REC 3: Genesis, she has a cameo that reveals she is the root cause of the demonic outbreak. Her origins are told by the character itself in the comic book REC: Historias Ineditas, released in 2012 alongside Genesis. Medeiros is portrayed by Spanish actor Javier Botet in the series.

La Niña Medeiros was originally a Portuguese girl named Tristana Medeiros Da Souza, who lived in a convent and used to work as a cook. One night, while praying in her bedroom, Tristana was raped by a group of priests and found by a nun in the morning, appearing to be dead. The nuns, fearing for her soul, tied her to a bed and attempted an exorcism during her vigil. However Tristana awoke, reacting violently to the priest's religious prayers, killed the nuns by screaming loudly, shattering the windows and impaling them with the glass. She then killed the attendant priest by hitting him on the head with a crucifix. Horrified, the same nun who found Tristana after the rape managed to calm her down by injecting her with a tranquilizer. A possessed Tristana was kept controlled with sedatives and tied to a crucifix, until Vatican priests arrived, one of them being Father Albelda. The case made headlines and, some time later, Tristana was reported missing.

Somehow, Albelda moved Medeiros to an apartment building in central Barcelona, where the demon was chained in the penthouse apartment and sealed behind a door which would only open in complete darkness. Besides being a religious man, Albelda carried out scientific experiments with Medeiros's blood, using rats and local children as guinea pigs. The tests revealed to him that the root of the possession was a particular enzyme, which had now mutated and become an infectious disease, spread via saliva and bodily fluids. Albelda concluded that he needed to kill the possessed girl to avoid a possible contagion. Albelda poisoned Medeiros's food, composed of human flesh, and offered the meal to her. When the creature seemingly fainted, Albelda unlocked the chains and it suddenly awoke, chasing him throughout the apartment. Albelda climbed into the air ducts, where the other infected children were trapped, and locked himself there to die. Medeiros became a blind and emaciated figure, supernaturally locked in the darkness, until she found a way out when Ángela and Pablo entered the penthouse.