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.