Quarantine

Typically when a movie is not screened for critics, it is a very bad sign. Quarantine was not screened for critics, but some of them paid their money, watched and reviewed it. Surprisingly many critics thought it was very scary and wondered why it was not screened for them. Then, 4 or 5 people in my horror film class started talking about how surprised they were by how scary and good Quarantine was, so I gave in and decided to watch it. Plus, when the whole hand-held shaky camera thing is done well, I really enjoy it. Before I begin, I will not bother using characters names because I never learned them while I was watching.

A female reporter and her cameraman are doing a human interest piece on fire fighters and so they are spending the night shift with them. It starts off with fire fighters teaching her how to slide down the pole, put on the clothes and just goofing off. They have no idea what is about to happen when they are called out to an apartment complex. When they get there they are told a woman screamed and fell, so there are 2 cops and 2 firemen in the complex, now. The woman who fell is foaming at the mouth and bites one of the cops. Then a fireman gets dropped off the balcony. Everyone involved freaks out, they call it in and when the cops show up, instead of helping, they shut all of the people in the building and soon people start turning into these rabid, foaming beasts.

For about the first hour Quarantine offers some pretty creepy and scary moments, utilizing the whole hand-held camera thing quite well. The first 3 or 4 instances where they run into one of those rabies infested people, the slow moving people with heavy breathing mixed with the camera bobbing up and down results in a very tense, cabin feverish mood for the audience as we are the cameraman. Sadly, the movie is not only an hour long. In the final 30 minutes the lead woman does nothing but hyperventilate and scream and it gets very annoying very fast. All of her whining crossed with her cameraman trying to calm her down bogs down the final act, when the final 30 minutes should be the most intense and crazy. It does not help that the final shot of the movie is not only given away int he trailer, but on the freaking poster! Anyone who watches horror movies could pick out that it was going to be the final shot.

The gimmick of shooting everything with a hand-held camera has been done better and it has been done worse, yet, this is the first time I was really annoyed by the cameraman continuing to film through it all, even though they gave a pretty good reason for it. The two remaining people-cameraman and reporter need the light offered by the camera to see in the pitch black. It makes sense, but still at some point do you not drop the camera and just attempt to survive? I get it, people have a right to know that law enforcement lies, but at what point does your own survival become more important? Is what they are doing the ultimate act of self sacrifice? Will their death force changes it how our law enforcement works? Will they stop lying to us as a nation if this tape is shown? Won't the tape ultimately end up in the hands of law enforcement anyway?

I don't know why I was conned into seeing this movie by a bunch of people. Maybe they wanted me to share in their headache. I will be giving them a talking to on in class, that is for sure. I was interesting for a while and there were some good creepy moments and one legitimate scare, but it is all nullified by a super obnoxious final 30 minutes. The shaky camera work doesn't really get overly annoying, but there were moments when a steady cam would have been helpful.

Final Grade: C-