Quarantine (2008)

It’s The Blair Witch Project, without the witch.

While on assignment shadowing firemen, a Los Angeles news reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman (Steve Harris) get trapped in a quarantined apartment complex with a vicious unknown killer. With all forms of communications cut, the news crew keeps the cameras rolling as they search for a way to escape rabies-infected zombies.

The film is a remake of the Spanish horror film REC. This remake is almost an entire shot for shot remake with a few exceptions such as added scenes and dialogue. I have never seen the original but God now I do.

The way of the camera documentary feel works so well in this film. Everything starts out normal, all fine and dandy, and soon everything starts getting out of control. The one thing I liked about this film is that it was a lot more vicious than I thought it would be and added a more of a scare factor to this film.

All the things they do with this film all create the amazingly frightening atmosphere. The one thing I thought was even creepier were how the cops and the rest outside of the hotel were as dangerous as the inside. They came off as people who were there to help them and care for them but they start killing whoever tries to leave, and the film gets its claustrophobic feeling from that and made it all the more creepy. Also the use of no score music if any music made it even creepier, as all this film relied on were the sound effects, which provided a huge taste of realism.

There were a lot of dumb problems with this film though. I didn’t understand why these people were so dumb. i mean honestly if you see a person bleeding from head to toe coming at you that’s foaming from the mouth wouldn’t you at least try to kill that person, I know I would. Also the way this apartment looks made it look like a cut from The Munsters. The rooms had like only little lamps in the house and barely any lighting which I found very dumb.

Jennifer Carpenter, who many may remember from Exorcism of Emily Rose, still has those lungs to belch out the screams. Though I thought she was very believable in this film, I just felt at times she yelled just to yell and add a scarier effect. Many of the other side characters are good to and each are very believable.

The one thing I have to say about this film which is not really it’s fault but how we all know this isn’t real so we aren’t that scared. In Blair Witch we actually thought all those people were dead and their last couple of hours were caught on film, but with this we know the outcome. I think many films nowadays need something that just makes it all seem real, to provide an even scarier feeling.

Consensus: Quarantine uses an uninspired way of filming but still delivers some scares with an amazingly creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere, make this film one of the scariest horror films that I have seen in awhile. See this in a huge group of friends.

9/10=Full Pricee!!!