Quarantine

Television reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman (Steve Harris) are assigned to spend the night with the night shift of the Los Angeles Fire Station.  After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment units.  They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown.  

After a few of the residents are viciously attacked, they try to escape with the news  crew in tow, only to find that the CDC has quarantined the building.  Phones, internet, televisions and cell phones have been cut off and officials are not relaying information to those locked inside.  When the quarantine is finally lifted, the only evidence of what took place is the news crew’s videotape.

Quarantine is an intense, brutal and exciting horror movie that goes to show that Hollywood can sometimes do big remakes of foreign films correctly.

So the Point Of View (POV) filming style has been done to death (Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead etc) but Quarantine manages to still make it into an extremely entertaining narrative that immediately immerses you into it’s terrifying world.  You wince at every bite, jump at all the scares and shit yourself when the infected sprint towards the camera.  My only gripe with the film is Jennifer Carpenter gets on your nerves a bit towards the end when she completely loses it but I guess if I was faced with the same circumstances I probably wouldn’t be able to hold it together.

The reason that Quarantine is a success is thanks to the filmmakers sticking extremely close to the source material, [REC] a low budget spanish movie that was quite a hit in it’s home country and on the foreign film circuit. 

A great addition to the horror genre that manages to retain it’s presence even on the small screen.

 

DVD Extras

-Locked in: The Making of Quarantine

-Anatomy of a stunt

-Dressing the Infected

-Commentary with Writer/Director John Erick Dowdle and Writer/Producer Drew Dowdle

 

Got a few minutes to spare?  Why not have some fun with this cool Quarantine Facebook App.

 

~Review by Lee

 

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