Jennifer Carpenter is under "Quarantine." Courtesy Screen Gems
Quarantine
MPAA rating: R for bloody violent and disturbing content, terror and language
Movietracker grade: B-
Following in the shakey-cam footsteps of B movie horror shot as amateur video like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Cloverfield,” comes this flick that attempts to outdo them all by using relatively recognizable TV and film actors and better production values. But, those are also its drawbacks.
What we see is reportedly raw footage for a TV show featuring peppy and telegenic reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter), shot by cameraman Scott Percival (Steve Harris), as they document a Los Angeles fire department working through their night shift. This preamble is a set-up designed to introduce us to these everyday heroes before the doody hits the fan. And it does when they get a call for assistance at a rundown apartment building.
What starts out to be a medical emergency soon escalates to terror when residents of the building begin showing signs of a rapidly communicable virus that turns them into mindlessly vicious killers. Worse, everyone inside, including the cops and firemen, are prevented from leaving the building by armed soldiers and HAZMAT-suited agents of the Centers for Disease Control. Their communications inside also are cut-off, from cell phones and internet to the electrical power itself, which makes the zombie-like killers even more hard to avoid.
Lots of paranoid terror and gore follow.
Based upon a 2007 Spanish film titled “Rec” by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, which has quite a cult following, this version takes the viewer out of the sense that this is real footage as soon as we see folks such as the Alma Award-nominated Jay Hernández (“Hostel,” “Lakeview Terrace”) and veteran Serbian character actor Rade Serbedzija (“24” and “Surface”). Plus, and this is just a technical quibble, I don’t know of any cameraman who would consider such darkly shot footage to be considered broadcast quality.
This does have some pretty decent jolts, though, and gushy stuff that might make the squeamish think twice, but it certainly does not look like “found footage.”
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