The long tradition of remaking foreign horror flicks hasn't let up this year, and since Halloween is right around the corner, we're not surprised that Hollywood's gobbling up every piece of celluloid it can get its greedy little hands on. That or it's milking franchises that should have shit the bed years ago [Saw V, we're looking at you...] A year ago a Spanish flick named [REC] hit the scene and got a positive reception from the world's horror buffs, thus lighting a fire under Hollywood's ass and BAM! Quarantine was born. The plot's pretty straightforward: Angela, a cutie newsreporter, and her cameraman shadow a team of very enthusiastic - and horny - firefighters in Los Angeles, they answer a 911 call involving an old woman in a sketchy apartment complex, and one neck-bite later, we're stuck in the middle of a P.O.V. pesudo-zombie shit show. As per usual horror flick standards, people foaming at the mouth and moaning in pain doesn't alert anyone that some real shit is about to go down. Once you get past the initial setup, Quarantine hits the ground running and you get caught up in the panic and frenzy that is pretty much the entire movie.
Quarantine is probably one of the best horror flicks we've seen this year. Although it runs through the standard jump out of your seat moments, the fresh spin on a mysterious epidemic in a big city and the military's involvement combined our love for big guns and biological threats that need to be eliminated with sniper fire. Quarantine is terrifying, the premise is fairly believable, and it consistently delivers the scares even after you think you've seen it all. Granted the ending is a bit cookie-cutter, it'll give the typical moviegoer nightmares.
Our complaints are few and far between. One of our major concerns going into this one was the gimmicky, vomit-inducing camerawork that goes hand-in-hand with these flicks. Recall Cloverfield and that asshole who wouldn't put the fucking camera down and help kill some critters or Diary of the Dead and the epic fail moment when the gang decides to charge their camera's battery in a hospital overrun with braineaters. We won't even mention The Blair Witch Project.. Luckily, Quarantine does a good job of avoiding too much shaky cam and it doesn't look like it was filmed by someone with a bad case of palsy. Our other problem with this flick was the complete lack of a final girl scenario and unless you've been brushing up on your Carol Clover, we'll warn you now: this movie doesn't help the feminist cause in horror movies of late. If you're up for a nice scare, do yourself a favor, check out Quarantine, and tell Saw V to "suck it!!" And with that...
1. Is the CDC really trained to fire M4s with red dot sights?
2. Are mad scientists always up to no good in their attics?
3. Is handball actually the preferred past-time activity for firefighters?
4. Does nightvision always make that badass Splinter Cell/Buffalo Bill sound when it powers up?
