Quarantine

So Quarantine came out on DVD last week, and I have to admit I’m pretty tired of these handheld cameramovies, so the only reason I was interested in seeing it was the fact that Jennifer Carpenter was in it. Apparently it’s a remake of the Spanish movie Rec, which was only made a year before Quarantine went into production. So, that’s weird.

The basic setup is that Jennifer Carpenter plays an up and coming news reporter (I’m guessing up and coming because the whole team consists of two people, and the camera man isn’t very good.) who is covering the night shift at a Los Angeles fire station. <Movie Announcer Voice> A routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment. What happens is anything but routine.</Movie Announcer Voice> Unless we’re talking about movies, and then, yeah … it’s pretty routine.

Anyway, the apartment is filled with … let’s just call them zombies for simplicity’s sake, who you know … try to eat people and stuff. When everyone attempts to flee the building, they find they’ve been locked in. Quarantined, if you will. In a refreshing change, the picture quality is quite good since we’re dealing with “broadcast quality cameras” instead of “some drunk guy’s Handicam”, and we’re also treated to full surround sound somehow (the news team must have a quality omni-directional microphone; it almost seems like they knew what was going to happen.) which is nice because they were able to add a little bit more atmosphere; something that can be tricky without the use of music.

Overall the acting is pretty sub-par aside from Carpenter who became convincingly hysterical toward the end of the film. I’ve always been impressed with her performance on Dexter, so it was nice to see her featured in a bigger part and in some different situations. Although, it was strange not hearing her drop the F-bomb in every other sentence. The camera operator also did a pretty good job in the acting department, but this guy wins for mustaches.

The best part about this movie (aside from Jennifer Carpenter’s legs), were the death scenes. There were some very cool special effects at work. Especially the ones that involved people falling off of, or onto something. The handheld camera effect really ads to some of the realism of these effects, because they can happen anytime. It’s not like you get the obvious “special effects” shot where the blue screen is visible, and the camera is sitting on a tripod so they don’t have to bother with motion detection and key framing. The camera is always moving, and the pacing made it feel like you were really going through this horrible night with the cast. I say cast instead of characters, because like I mentioned before, a lot of them weren’t very convincing, which ruined some of the immersion for me.

All things considered Quarantined is pretty fun, especially if you aren’t subject to motion sickness. It’s got a couple good scares, and it moves along quickly, so you’re sure to not get bored unless you have an extra short attention span.