Quarantine

I found "Quarantine" on On Demand today and decided to give it a shot. I had heard while at the theater last year that it was good, but then again most of that was coming out of the mouths of jabbering teens and tweens who were also seeing "Disaster Movie"

We had shown the trailer before it came out at work, so I knew what they were going for in it, riding the wave of Cloverfield but a little bit smaller, and well maintained i.e. instead of a large city (NYC) almost all the action takes place within one apartment building.

The beginning starts slow, but smart with a woman doing a late night show where they go around to different places in the night that are open and interview the people. Like the show "Insomniac" but with a cute girl instead of Dave Attel. After building some romantic notions between the two central characters the girl interviewer and a fire fighter they get crackin' on the actual plot. The call comes in, they head out and go to where the zombies are.

Now this is where I thought it was going to turn and be...bad. But I was surprised to find a slow build, a tension at the bottom of my stomach over where the first scare was going to come from, and it comes slowly, and not overblown. As they try to get a handle on the situation people, very slowly start to die, they spend the majority of their time arguing amongst them selves and trying to find a way out of the now quarantined building. In this sense it seemed much more realistic to me than I thought it would be. There is no leader, they argue and when someone is attacked the other people don't run over to help, they run for their lives.

Towards the end it goes right where you knew it was going to go the whole time, and the plot plays out and unfolds like all the other ones, but not to a fault. It has a great last shot, I just wish they hadn't used that same shot in the trailer.

Now about the way it was shot, they are smart with what they show and even more so what they don't. The camera becomes a tool for them, less to capture whats happening, but more so because it has an on-board light, and they don't have much light in the building. I would say hit a light switch, but there goes all the usable and exploitable darkness and mystery. They use the camera for its night vision and as a sentry to look into the attic to see if anything is there instead of their heads. Make up looked good, and I was impressed.

Over all is it something you need to see, was I scared at any point...no. But I still smiled and wrung my hands waiting for the next turn. I give it 7/10 stars on the horror scale, over all as just a movie it falls to a 6/10. If you like horror movies its one of the better ones Ive seen recently, but still lacking in respects.