Jager Bombs and Quarantine

Apparently Quarantine, a film starring Jennifer Carpenter (better known as Dexter's sister,) and a whole bunch of other people you've never heard of, is a remake of a Spanish film called [REC], which I'm sure is infinitely better. Not to say that Quarantine is without its positives, it's actually scarier than hell, in a "HOLY SHIT! THAT THING CAME FLYING OUTTA F@#KING NOWHERE, DIDN'T IT!!!" kinda way. It rips off a plethora of better horror films from the past 40 years, including Night of the Living Dead, Rabid, The Silence of the Lambs, and most obviously, The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, with which it shares a wing in the motion sickness hall of fame. The entire thing is seen from the POV of a news cameraman who has tagged along with the local fire department for what they figured would be a routine evening. There is a longish, annoying, "getting to know you" sequence that opens the film which had me on the precipice of shutting the whole damn thing off so I wouldn't harm any of my video equipment.

Upon arriving at their first call of the evening, they slowly realize that they shouldn't be getting too close to the tenants of the building who seem to be foaming at the mouth and whose skin has turned all greenish-gray because those are the ones who will soon be pulling people's throats out. This realization comes much more slowly than you might think.

I haven't seen the film from which all the ideas for this one were stolen, but I would hope that we could be spared some of the "realism" as far as the camera work is concerned. Yeah, probably if some idiot local news camera guy were thrust into a situation where he was trapped in a building with a bunch of bloodthirsty apartment dwellers who have been infected with a mutant form of rabies by the lovable neighbor girl's dog, he could certainly have shot some footage that might come out looking very similar to what we find in Quarantine. Does that mean as producers of a Hollywood film, that we have to submit our audiences to that kind of torture in the theater? At home watching horror films, I sometimes find myself yelling things like "ARE YOU STUPID? DO NOT SOLVE THAT DEMONIC PUZZLE BOX!" Or, "JESUS, NO! DO NOT DANGLE YOUR FEET OVER THE SIDE OF THE BOAT!" I could go on and on. However, during this film, I was yelling things like, "COULD YOU POSSIBLY HOLD THAT F#%KING CAMERA STILL FOR FIVE AND HALF GODDAMNED SECONDS!!!" At one point, the camera guy drops his goddamned camera, and until he picks it up maybe 10 seconds later, it was like stumbling upon an oasis in the desert. The last half an hour or so of this movie is truly a test of your intestinal fortitude. I dare you to turn off the lights, fire this thing up on the 55", and do three or four shots of Jagermeister. Your nostrils will taste the acid. Trust me.

But if you can put aside the highly annoying perf by Carpenter, who deserved better, (her work on Dexter is top-knotch,) and some way-too realistic camera work, Quarantine is definitely worth a look for a bunch of gut wrenching scares. Fun and fast paced once it finally gets moving, (which takes far too long) I give Quarantine 3 out of 5 stars.