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Quarantine

Movie details

Television reporter Angela Vidal and her cameraman are assigned to spend the night shift with a 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.

Director John Erick Dowdle

Stars Jennifer Carpenter, Columbus Short, Marin Hinkle, Dennis O'Hare, Zulay Haneo, Greg Germann, Rade Serbedzija, Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech

Strong horror violence

Our review

Rookie reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman, Scott (Steve Harris), shoot a reality-TV show about people who work midnight shifts while the rest of the world is asleep. They are assigned to cover night duties at an LA fire station, where nothing much happens apart from flirting and the character establishment of Vidal and her cameraman, as well as those of the two firemen they've been assigned to (guess who dies first).

Suddenly, they get a call and rush to a small apartment block where they meet up with two cops. Once inside, they find a woman covered in blood and breathing heavily. She then attacks them... with her teeth. As the cast try to get help for the injured policeman, they realise that the building is sealed and they have no way of escaping.

If the premise sounds familiar, it is because "Quarantine" is a remake of a Spanish horror film released just last year.

The entire film is shot with the one camera to give it a more realistic feel (much like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield"). Similarly, the camerawork here is shaky and, as the horror mounts, the camera finds it harder to focus. This is a technique that works here; however, if you get motion sickness or have an aversion to gore, don't see the film.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out who will live, who will die and what the ending will be. As such, the character development is perfunctory at best.

"Quarantine" is supposed to be a horror film, and although there are tense moments, there is nothing more substantial to it. The cast is as solid as a horror movie cast can be (all Carpenter needs to do is look pretty, look flirty, look scared, scream, look pretty, look scared and so on), but otherwise it falls into the category of "been there, done that".

4/10

Patrick Tangye