In his first major-release, director John Erick Dowdle followed the Hollywood trend of recreating recent foreign horror films. The new release “Quarantine” is based on the 2007 Spanish film “Rec,” which is about the horrifying goings on in a government-quarantined apartment.
Dowdle takes a page from J.J. Abrams’ “Cloverfield,” using a first-person camera angle, and uses the cut-and-play function frequently in the first 15 minutes as the plot is set up and the cast is introduced.
The plot begins with a television reporter and her cameraman waiting outside a firehouse. Eventually, the fire trucks are called out to their first run of the night. As the characters approach the destination, they find out no fire. Instead, a bearded landlord tells them he heard an old lady screaming in her room.
The action begins as a zombie illustrated grandmother starts attacking members of the police and fire departments. The diseased woman is able to manhandle some of the LAPD and LAFD’s finest. As, soon as panic begins to break, the SWAT team surrounds the building, trapping the civilians and already-introduced cast inside.
The governing power on the outside slowly begins cutting off the stranded survivors in the apartment complex. First they remove cell-phone usage, and then they with cut off the internet and cable lines before they remove power from the complex. Luckily, as is the case in all disease films, there is a vet present to help treat the wounds of the infected. Sadly enough, it takes the poor doctor nearly an hour to discover that the disease is a form of rabies – despite the fact that victims have been foaming at the mouth for most of the film.
Although it becomes apparent that the characters’ frustrating stupidity is only there to keep the thriller going, the movie is nonetheless entertaining.
The deaths in the film are enjoyably melodramatic, with two people falling through floors and a guy getting picked off by a sniper. Unfortunately for horror-film fans, only about three of the deaths are witnessed.
The good humanitarian roles are becoming repetitive in the suspense/thriller movies. Everyone in the film tries desperately to protect or save the sickened antagonist, eliminating the fight-or-flight stance that would be represented in reality. The only satisfaction comes when a determined fireman, played by Jay Hernandez, starts flailing a sledgehammer to decapitate anyone who gets in his way of escaping the building.
The acting is not bad until the crying and hyperventilating begins, then it becomes annoying and repetitive. “Quarantine” begins slowly and ends quickly but gets in and out of the film without clearing up how or why the entire apartment building became a zombie dorm. The plus side, you get to see a firsthand perspective of how to kill a rabies infested woman with a television camera.
Jay Homan can be reached at [email protected].
