Movie Info
Movie Name: Quarantine
Studio: Vertigo Entertainment
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): October 10, 2008
MPAA Rating: R
This will be a fun night of hilarity!!!
Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) is a reporter out for a man-on-the-street story about the Los Angeles fire department. With her camera man Scott Percival (Steve Harris), she goes with the fire department on a routine run to an apartment where there is reports of a sick woman. When the woman attacks the police and fire fighters who have responded, Angela discovers she’s been sealed off in the apartment. With the sickness spreading, Angela and Scott must try to escape the apartment before it is too late.
Directed by John Erick Dowdle, Quarantine is a zombie found-footage horror film. The movie is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the Spanish horror film [REC] from 2007. The film was met with average reviews and had a modest box-office showing.
I just wanted to point out you have some zombie blood on your lens
I saw [REC] before I saw Quarantine. The movie is virtually the same, but seems to lose some of [REC]’s edginess. I think as a horror film, Quarantine still works, but I’d rather stick to the original.
Quarantine’s basic story is simple. It is essentially the reverse of Night of the Living Dead in that the characters are trapped in the building with zombies instead of outside. It doesn’t make much sense however to “not” isolate people in their apartments (as discussed in the film) since it could have potentially saved them all. The movie does change a bit of story of the original by making the plague an aggressive form of rabies ([REC]2 took the story in a very, very different direction).
I watched all of Dexter, and the weakest link in the Dexter series was Deb and her battle with bad acting. This movie didn’t help to prove that as an inaccurate assessment. As a reporter, she’s the world worst interviewer and as a victim of a zombie attack, she’s a bit better…still she’s not great.
Can’t a rabies zombie eat in peace?!?!
Visually, the movie suffers from found-footage syndrome. There is a lot of running and jerky cameras and you always feel like you miss the best stuff. The lack of people in the apartment and easy “killability” of the zombies seems to take some urgency from the story (why not just kill them all?) I like the monster creature which you don’t get to see enough of, but the zombies are rather typical (though I do like running zombies).
Quarantine isn’t a bad movie and I worry that people will see it instead of the original. Despite being almost identical, [REC] feels more natural, and it might be due to the language detachment…here, it feels like they are trying too hard to be real. Quarantine was followed by a sequel Quarantine 2: Terminal in 2011.
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