Claustrophobic Quarantine an Infectious Scare
For television news reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) this was any other night. Shadowing Los Angeles firemen Jake (Jay Hernandez ) and Fletcher (Johnathon Schaech) for the evening, all is going swimmingly and the group can’t help but feel a rush of excitement when a 911 call sends them to a downtown apartment building to assist in a medical emergency.
Jennifer Carpenter is trapped with no escape in Screen Gems' Quarantine
What thy and the already on the scene police department find is a seemingly docile old woman dripping blood from the corner of her mouth and twirling around in frantically hysterical circles. She seems sick, raspy and coughing like a dying smoker, but when she bites one of the cops ripping out a piece of his neck the size of an apricot Angela and Scott suddenly realize this isn’t going to be just any other story.
Next thing they all know, the CDC has quarantined the entire complex and they, the firemen, the remaining officer and all the building’s residents find themselves trapped inside. But they are not alone, the old woman not the only infected party, and with no way out and nowhere to turn the only thing any of them can do is keep the camera rolling and pray.
Based on the 2007 Spanish horror thriller Rec, it almost goes without saying that Quarantine is another of those The Blair Witch Project wannabes a la Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead. In other words, it ain’t exactly original, and no matter how effective the trailers and commercials for it were I’m not exactly going to admit that my early preconceptions of the picture were strong.
Originality or no but damn it all if this stripped-down frightener put me on pins and needles and, at times, terrified the ever-living stuffing right out from inside of me. Director John Erick Dowdle (The Poughkeepsie Tapes) keeps the pace moving at an almost breakneck pace, the tension increasing exponentially as the disaster surrounding those trapped inside the apartment complex gets increasingly worse.
Working with brother and co-writer Drew Dowdle, the pair have crafted a nifty little piece of B-movie adrenaline that’s shockingly effective. The movie constantly kept me on my toes, twisting and turning into ever-tightening knots of blood, guts, shrieks and scares that send me into Goosepimpled fits of absolutely petrified delight.
I admit that there isn’t really anywhere new or different for the filmmakers to take things, and if you’ve watched the trailers you already know how this one is going to end. My enjoyment was also somewhat diluted thanks to the increasingly annoying performance of Carpenter. This has got to be one of the first time I’ve ever watched an actor start out as Sigourney Weaver only to slowly dissolve into Bill Paxton, and after about her umpteenth bout of shrieking hysteria almost caused another of her protectors to get killed I almost started to wish one of the infected residents would disembowel the chick. Talk about game over.
This earsplitting aggravation aside, Quarantine worked about twenty times better than I’d ever have expected it to. The two Dowdles craft a rip-roaring piece of claustrophobic tension that grabs viewers by the throat, plays with it sinisterly before ultimately ripping it clean out with gnarly blood-stained relish. In a 2008 with rather few horror films worth the bother, this one offers up frights so wonderful they might just be contagious.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Quarantine Theatrical Trailer
