Quarantine (DVD)

With the increase in “reality” entertainment in the past few years, I seem to have gotten lost in the shuffle. Sure, some reality TV shows are entertaining in a guilty pleasure sort of way, but when they try to apply similar concepts to movies, I just don’t really get it.  A recent example that springs to mind is the movie ‘Cloverfield’, which is told from a first person camera view point. I just couldn’t get into the movie due to the shaky cam effects. It wasn’t so horrible that I started vomiting or got motion sickness, but it just seemed way too contrived. When I first saw previews of Quarantine, the movie looked pretty interesting. From what I could gather, it seemed to be a smart sci-fi/horror thriller with probably a few plot twists thrown in for good measure.  The actual movie, however, was nothing like I thought it would be.

Quarantine is the story of a young reporter named Jennifer (Angela Vidal) who is tagging along with a crew of firemen (Jay Hernandez and Jonathan Schaech) as they make their rounds. The story starts off interestingly enough, beginning with some footage of Jennifer getting to know the firemen at the station, attempting to establish the relationships and humanity of the characters from early on. The firemen get called to an apartment building where police are already on the scene for reports of an elderly resident screaming in pain from within her apartment. Once they enter the apartment, they are immediately attacked by the old lady. To make matters worse, the building is suddenly on lock down from the outside, leaving the news crew, the police officers, firemen, and building residents trapped within.  We then find out that the building is in a state of quarantine due to a suspected viral outbreak from one of the residents.  The rest of the film is about the survivors trying to fight off the infected and find a way to escape from the building.

While the setup seems pretty good, there are a couple of major factors that really just crush whatever potential this film may have had. The first issue is with the pacing of the film. It starts off extremely slow, showcasing the characters and giving some slight background info on them, then ramps up the intensity as the first few attacks occur. Then the pacing once again slows to a crawl for a while, and then it intensifies with another attack. Soon after, the pace slows again and…well you should get the idea. While I understand it can’t be non stop intensity throughout the film, the slow paced moments fail to maintain any of the tension established by the action portions. If they kept some level of tension continuously throughout the film, it would have been better.

Another major issue is with the camera. They were obviously going for some type of realism by having the story being shown from the viewpoint of the news crew camera man.  This includes everything from him dropping the camera to falling down a flight of stairs while holding the camera. Not only is it a bit irritating, it also fails to capture some of the action.  I understand that they may have been trying to convey the feelings of entrapment, but the settings alone were claustrophobic enough that they could’ve been shot using more traditional camera work and still be as effective. While the camera was supposed to add some ‘realism’ to the movie, the effect was quite the opposite for me and it kept killing the sense of immersion.

Finally, the storyline is pretty flawed. The explanation of the virus is a bit contrived at best. While they tried to add a few mysteries and twists throughout the story, they were all quite obvious and could be seen from a mile away.  The virus itself is rather lackluster by modern movie standards. With movies like the ‘28 days/weeks’ series, ‘I am Legend’, and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ zombie-esque creatures have been done many times before and far better than in this film. During most of the zombie attack scenes I remember thinking to myself  “they’re lucky this isn’t ‘28 Weeks Later’ or they’d be screwed.”

I’m not even going to get into the casting for this film. The cast wasn’t bad, but they weren’t memorable at all. I got the impression that anyone could have been cast in this movie. Overall they got the job done.

If you’re really dying to watch this movie, don’t let me try to dissuade you. For the most part, the film was decent at best, but nothing spectacular. I definitely would not pay to watch this in theaters, and as far as renting the movie goes, I would rather rent another film in the genre instead of this one. If you do wind up renting this, you may wind up watching it in quarantine as you may be the only person in the room watching.