Quarantine
Angela Vidal and her camera man Scott are doing a feature on the LA fire department when a call comes in regarding a small appartment building where inhabitants heard an old woman scream very loudly. In order to shoot some action, Angela and Scott decide to ride along but they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.
Once arrived, the old woman attacks one of the cops that’s present and before long it becomes clear she’s infected with some disease that spreads extremely fast and turns humans into crazed killers. To make things worse, the authorities outside have locked all exits of the building and prevent anyone from getting outside the building at all cost…
Sound and Vision:
In Quarantine we get to follow the action from the point of view of the camera and as such things look chaotic and sometimes a bit hard to follow. Also certain scenes are so dark it’s almost impossible to see what’s going on. However, this is all intentional and on the technical side of things we didn’t spot any problems.
The sound does a good job creating a creepy atmosphere by nicely using the surround speakers and subwoofer for effects.
Extras:
– Audio commentary track by writer/director John Erick Dowdle and writer/producer Drew Dowdle
– “Locked In” Making Of
– Dressing the Infected
– Anatomy of a Stunt
– Trailers
A couple of nice extras about how the movie was made and the difficulties the makers faced. Rather than quantity we get quality here.
Conclusion:
Quarantine is an American remake of the Spanish movie [Rec] and does a good job at that. Often we see remakes that focus more on plain action than the suspense from the original but the makers nicely succeeded in keeping the tension high. Like with The Blair Witch Project we get to see everything from the point of view of the camera but here we’re confined in a building rather than a forest. This makes things a bit more claustrophobic and also manages to heighten the feeling of anxiety.
The acting is very good and Jennifer Carpenter (known also from the TV series Dexter) truly impresses with her ability to go completely berserk of fear.
If you liked The Blair Witch Project, you’ll definitely love this one. If you didn’t like that movie, you still should give this one a try as things are a bit more down to earth and the supernatural is left completely out. Only at the very end does the movie fail a bit but we gladly forgive the makers for that as we definitely enjoyed watching.
6.0