Quarantine

Synopsis

T.V. reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, Showtime’s Dexter) and her cameraman (Steve Harris, Diary of a Mad Black Woman) are assigned to spend the night shift with a LA Fire Station. A typical 911 call takes them to an apartment building where police officers are already on the scene in response to screams coming from one of the units. No one knows that a woman living in the building has contracted a severe and very uncommon virus. After several attacks, the news crew and others try to escape, but the CDC has quarantined the building and they are trapped. We only know all this because we’re watching the cameraman’s tape.

Review

Blood, guts and infected humans foaming at the mouth seems to be the horror flick formula. Mix I Am Legend, 28 Days, and Doomsday together and you’ve got Quarantine. What I want to know is why do people make dummy moves in these kinds of movies? A prime example would be, if you’ve witnessed someone that was foaming at the mouth, making strange grunting noises and biting the mess out of someone, then you see someone else with the SAME symptoms, why would you even touch them? Leave them be and bounce. I do believe in human kindness and helping one another, but come on, not when it jeopardizes my glorious well-being. Quarantine will give you a startle, but it will be hard to ignore the bonehead moves in this movie.

Quarantine offers the same type of filming that Cloverfield had for its movie. It’s all filmed and seen through a handheld camera. The camera is held by Scott Percival (Harris) a cameraman for a local news station. He and news reporter Angela Vidal (Carpenter) are doing a news segment at a Los Angeles fire station during the night shift. This is a pretty good set up especially if you have no idea what the movie is about. It gives the viewers a chance to get to know the main character, Angela. Scott the cameraman is almost always behind the camera, but because he controls what we see you’ll spend some time during this flick asking him some WTF questions as he runs around and seems to get all the gore at the best angle. PUT THE CAMERA DOWN AND THROW SOME BLOWS, MAN! Okay, I know I'm jumping ahead a tad bit. Let me back on up.

The fire department receives a 911 call and Angela and Scott tag along with firefighters Jake (Jay Hernandez, Hostel) and George (Johnathon Schaech, ) to an older apartment building. These two guys are to help our news crew get all the action.

When on the scene, everyone is taken to a woman’s unit where loud screams were heard earlier. The woman in the unit looks raggedy, bloody and crazy. She attacks one of the cops and all heck breaks loose. LA’s finest and the news crew all try to rush outside for help, but are greeted with locked doors and no way out. The building has been sealed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). SAY WHAT???? “Oh heck naw” is what I was thinking. I’m in this funky looking apartment for all of 5 minutes and you’re trying to tell me I can’t leave. I’m stuck?

Quarantine has some great suspenseful moments especially with Angela, Scott and Jake, but one clip in the trailer gave WAY TOO much away if you are not familiar with footage type of movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. Guaranteed you will be dissatisfied with its ending. There is one scene with a surprise scare moment that my sister JUMPED so hard it moved our entire row of seats. Now that was funny. I can tell you this much, Carpenter, Hernandez, and Harris can do some acting. Carpenter had me hyperventilating a couple of times like her. There is some straight up anxiety in this flick.

Now here’s sistah girl's rant, readers.

Scott is somehow able to hold that heavy camera through the entire ordeal of running up and down stairs, dodging zombies and trying to calm Angela down. Mmmm hmmm. In the movie Cloverfield, the city is getting destroyed by some LARGE creature, yet some guy is able to hold on to a camcorder through the entire scary ordeal (except the few obligatory drops to add "realism"). Perhaps it can be done. All I know is my behind ain’t trying to hold on to a camera for dear life when the world seems like it’s coming to an end or some human infected with a strange virus is in a fit of rage ready to take a chunk out of my neck. That camera will be thrown at one of those creatures' head and the gun shot will go off in my ear for the 100 meter race. You see, I’d be GONE on my way to a Gold medal.

Heels, purse, and if I'm wearin' one—a wig—would be tossed aside to get up outta there. Hello?? You feel me, right? I mean when those tsunamis hit Indonesia, the tourists would record stuff as long as they could, but when they saw that water lifting up cars, all we saw was a camera swinging back and forth at the ground because they were kickin it. I'm talking GONE! Forget the footage. It's about survival.

Look, here’s the reel deal. If you aren’t very familiar with the 'footage found’ type of films, or the ones where people are infected with some incurable virus that turns them into blood sucking creatures, then you will love Quarantine and all that it has to offer. Now, if you’ve seen all the aforementioned movies in this review, than Quarantine won’t be a shockeroo to you and can be left to DVD only status.

My Rating ~ 3 Reels

Audience Rating (What's Yours?)