Movie Review: Quarantine

By / October 15, 2008 /

We love horror movies over here. The kind that make us scream like little boys and girls who didn’t get any ice cream. It’s not good unless we’re jumping out of our seats and grabbing the person next to us. Good times. Our hopes were high for Quarantine. This is an American remake of the Spanish film [REC]. We haven’t seen the Spanish version, but we hope to god that it’s better than this waste of celluloid.

Sure, we were just waiting till someone takes the Cloverfield premise into the horror genre, but we did expect a more worthwhile effort. This just feels cheap. Even from the beginning where we are supposed to “learn” and “care” about the characters before they ever face any danger. The protagonist in this story is the spunky and beautiful Angela Vidal, played by Jennifer Carpenter. We’ll give this to Ms. Carpenter, she is probably the best thing going for the film; this girl has some great screaming chops. We thought we were going to lose some fillings every time she let one more of those shrills out of her lungs. But, alas not even the best screams in the world can save the worst films.

Angela is a news reporter doing a story at the local fire department with her trusty camera man. The whole film is shot POV from the camera. Of course, this is found footage. That’s not spooky enough for you, huh? Well, don’t worry it gets worse. After much horse play with the news crew and firemen; the alarm goes off and the Angela tags along. But, surprise…this is no fire…this is a bunch of people in a building with zombie written all over them. We know that because they are foaming at the mouth and groan a lot. And let’s face it, that could be any of us over at the Egotist headquarters after a long night.

But, lots of mumbo-jumbo later and we learn it’s really just a rare case of zombie rabies. Which, you know, makes so much more sense. If you are looking for lots of biting and blood vomiting with some bad acting thrown in, well this could be the movie for you. We’re not judging. One of our favorite moments came in the middle of the film when the camera man hammers a female zombie type head-on into the old wood floor with his camera, again and again. We just kept thinking to ourselves, what respectable camera guy would ruin his lens like that?

Check out Quarantine if you can’t get enough of Blair Witch and Cloverfield. You might dig the whole bouncy and shaky camera thing. As for us, we’re going to rent The Exorcist.