Movie Review: Week Four

Quarantine Review: B

Getting into the Halloween swing a little bit early, I decided to check out a scary movie this week. It is not a new release, as I’m wont to review, but the opening of High School Musical 3 this weekend made my regular viewing schedule a hellish rush of teenagers that I just did not have the time or patience to deal with. So I opted out of wading through the giddy boppers and instead went with a movie that literally only had myself and the friend I went with as its audience that night.

Quarantine has a relatively straight forward plot. A newsreporter and her camera man are covering a fire station through the night shift for their show. A seemingly simple medical call brings them their first emergency run of the night, the intrepid pair shadowing two firemen as they make their way to an old, small apartment complex. Police are already on the scene as the four rush inside the building and are told by its inhabitance that there was terrible screaming coming from one of the apartments upstairs. From there they learn that there is something awful running amuck which makes those infected extremely aggressive. Things go from bad to worse after a policeman and a fireman are attacked, and the building is quarantined by plastic window coverings, metal door braces and armored men with big guns.

Jennifer Carpenter plays the oddly precocious young reporter who spends most of her time in front of the camera. I imagine she might strike some people as annoying, particularly during the first few scenes as the news team struggles to find something interesting to cover during the relatively quiet night at the station. Yet I found her to be endearing and honest: just a natural reflection of a woman who has fun with her job, but might not be as good at it as she wants to be. She is calm and quiet, even when she’s screaming, and her progression into panic as the night marches on and the events get worse is just horrifying to watch. I think because I identified with her so readily really plays in to why the movie struck me as very, very scary.

That, and the zombies.

Okay, so a minor spoiler is to remind you that they’re not actually zombies, because they’re not technically dead as they attack the uninfected few. But they certainly act, move, and bite into human flesh as masterfully as any zombie I’ve seen, so I’m willing to over look the technicalities. There is a scene where the firemen, having just arrived at the building, move into the apartment where they were told some awful screams were coming from. There’s a woman standing at the end of the hall, and you can hear her breathing. It’s raspy and piercing: something close to growling. This is a moment where, if there had been more than just the two of us present, the entire audience would be yelling ‘don’t go in there’.

There are some truly great, heart-thundering-in-your-chest scenes littered through out this film, which all adds up to a terrifying conclusion. The acting by most of the main cast is solid and believable, ranging from the typical confusion over the events around them to a very potent, quiet breakdown after one of the civilians has to kill an infected attacker. Their hysteria never seems out of place, and it does not distract from the movie viewers own reactions to the thrills and chills.

Now it would be unfair not to mention that Quarantine is a remake of a Spanish horror movie called [REC]. It is not entirely word for word, as a lot of the plot content from the original was removed for this version. Without going into detail and spoiling both movies, it would just be fair to say that the two should not be compared in a ‘which one is better’ kind of competition. I don’t think the point was to make a better version of it. It’s just story telling, and both are compelling for their own reasons. There are more than enough similarities to justify just viewing one version, and being content in the choice. Giving Quarantine demerits because it’s not exactly the same strikes me as defeating the purpose of remaking something: of wanting to tell the story in a different way. And that’s just what happened here.

I thought the camera was going to be a detriment. We were warned going in that it had the ‘seasick camera’ in it, and I could not help but think back to Cloverfield. Yet this movie managed to keep the camera far more stable, the running scenes limited to stairs and hallways rather than expanses of New York City blocks. Or maybe the professional camera man character was simply better at filming live situations than the every day party goer. In any case, it was not a nauseating experience as far as the camera work itself went. There were, of course, other things to feel sick about, but that was an intended part of the fun.

Of course, there are faults in this movie, as with any other. Some of the plot elements are easily figured out, and a number of explanations fail to be revealed. Particularly at the end, as the news crew explore one final room in the building. They take moments to show you new and interesting things, but the film comes crashing to an end before they are fully revealed. I suppose that makes sense, since the tag line says that the only evidence of these events is what the camera crew caught on tape, and they can hardly be expected to get everything, but still. It seems cruel to show us these things that might really help to understand everything, and then end if before we get there.