Quarantine (Screen Gems)
Once You Get In, You Cant Get Out
Quarantine is one of those movies you know is going to scare you silly but you cant stay away. You are drawn to it even as you are repelled by it. And yes it does scare you silly, but it could have been a lot worse if only they hadnt given so much away in the trailer. For those of us who like to be scared silly this was a big mistake.
The film starts a little too slowly with TV reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) filming some opening interviews with the firemen in a Los Angeles firehouse. They are going to ride with a fire crew on any calls they get that night.
Jake (Jay Hernandez) and George (Johnathan Schaech) are the two main firemen she sticks with. She goes on their truck when they get a call to go to an apartment building where a woman has been heard screaming in her room. Once Angela and the fire crew enter the building (the Hotel California comes to mind) they arent allowed to leave. It seems there is an epidemic of some kind being transmitted between people and animals in the building.
The illness causes the person who is sick to become aggressive and try to bite anyone else around. If they are successful then the next person immediately gets the illness. The people inside the building are not being allowed to leave because the authorities dont want the illness to spread.
The remainder of the film concerns the people in the building trying to stay alive long enough to find a way out of the building. And in true Ten Little Indians fashion they are eliminated one by one.
The whole film is shown from the point of view of the TV camera. This cameras eye view works much better in this movie than it did in Cloverfield. You actually understand why the camera is on all the time, and in one remarkable scene it is used as an instrument to bludgeon a creature to death.
The acting is also good in this movie with Carpenter being better than average. She actually looks scared to death throughout most of the movie. Harris is also good though we hear his voice more than we actually see him.
The movie is rated R for profanity and violence.
Quarantine is a little too predictable especially when we keep watching for the scenes they showed us in the trailer. With a little less advance warning the overall effect of the movie would have been scarier.
I scored Quarantine a rabid 6 out of 10.
