Review: Quarantine (18)
by Evening Chronicle
AN estimated 6.7 billion people on the planet, conversing in thousands of different languages, and all Hollywood seems to speak is ‘remake’.
Unless it’s a prominent director such as Ang Lee or Guillermo Del Toro, American audiences shy away from subtitles, providing filmmakers with the perfect excuse to plunder foreign shores for inspiration.
Asia remains fertile ground for ghost stories and here, writer-director John Erick Dowdle rehashes the chilling Spanish horror film [REC].
Quarantine adheres closely to the template of Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s gory, suburban nightmare, employing the same faux-documentary style of Blair Witch Project.
Indeed, sections of Dowdle’s film unfold almost shot-for-shot, word-for-word, scream-for-scream and splat-for-splat.
TV reporter Angela Vidal (Carpenter) is sent to a Los Angeles fire station with her regular cameraman Scott (Harris) to make a behind-the-scenes segment.
The TV duo shadow Jake (Hernandez) and George (Schaech) through the night shift, including a 911 call to rescue an old woman barricaded inside her apartment.
No sooner are the firefighters, Angela and Scott inside the building than agents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seal off the exits.
“We need to show people what’s going on in here,” whispers Angela as the trapped residents learn they are in the midst of an outbreak of a rabies-like contagion.
The violence is more graphic, but Quarantine will only interest audiences, who didn’t see [REC] earlier this year.
Watch the trailer for Quarantine below:
(18, 89 mins) Horror/Action/Thriller. Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Harris, Columbus Short, Greg Germann, Rade Serbedzija, Marin Hinkle, Joey King. Director: John Erick Dowdle.
