What's October without a few new horror movies? And, since I hate 'Saw' and everything it stands for, we instead went to see 'Quarantine.'
'Quarantine' is, for a quick explanation, a cross between 28 Weeks Later and Cloverfield. It's like 28 Weeks Later because its about an outbreak, and it's like Cloverfield because it's all done with a shaky handheld camera. Needless to say, I got nauseous on account of the movement.
There's a film crew tagging along following the LAFD (a la 'COPS') on their night shift, when they get a 911 call and respond. They find a woman with (what is later explained as) 'super- rabies' and they then find that they are locked (or quarantined) in the building by about 100,000 officials who appeared out of no where. Stuff escalates, people run around screaming and dying, and that's basically the gist of the movie.
They're like zombies in that they are biting people and apparently can't feel pain, but they're not like zombies in that they're not re-animated dead people. There's a few cool scenes that illustrate these points (especially one with the moustached fire-fighter). This coupled with the fact that everyone was trapped in this apartment building with no chance to leave (they get shot if they try) makes for an interesting situation.
For the most part the acting was actually pretty good, which caught me by surprise, considering it was mostly a bunch of nobodies, the Spanish girl who came into the second season of 'Heroes' and Deb from Dexter. Deb was the star, and did the best job, actually, in that she really, really portrayed 'terrified beyond belief' really well. Erin described it as "a natural progression of fear" - it started off fairly low and controlled, and went into various fits of hysteria and hyperventilating. Good work, Deb.
The major problem I had with this movie (other than the fact that it gave me a headache which lasted about 15 hours) was that everything was incredibly coincidental - which would be the fault of the writing. The 911 call happened for an almost unrelated reason, which gave the firefighters and TV crew to arrive literally minutes before the quarantine experts, who traced the "source" back to this building for a reason that actually happened several days prior. That's the major one that irritated me. You'd think in a situation like 'super-rabies' (which causes people to attack/eat people savagely) would rank a little higher on the priority list of the bio-hazard people. There's then a ridiculously convenient moment with the little girl (who is also conveniently interviewed by Deb - considering there are about 20 people in the building and only 2 get interviewed and shes one for some reason). It was convenient for a number of reasons. Basically whenever everything was fine for more than 5 seconds, someone screwed up/questioned something thus raising the body count for the next 10 minutes. I also thought it was odd that most of the first people to go (not to ruin it for people - it's not a universal rule) are the trained professionals, and people who should be able to physically handle themselves.
The big plus to this movie was the fact that they simply described the outbreak as 'super-rabies.' I appreciated that. They weren't trying to pass it off as some kind of zombie-virus that brought people back from the dead - people were just going crazy with all the symptoms of rabies. Thankfully one of the people in the apartment complex was a vet (coincidence), yet oddly not the vet that would have been MOST convenient (though it would have made the most sense... that sounds confusing, but when you see it, it'll make sense.
2.9 / 5 - The shaky-cam effect was used well here, in that movie-blood and stuff, that don't normally bother me, started to get to me because I was already feeling ill because of it. Hopefully it'll be the last of the 'shaky-cam' for a while - the well is starting to go dry. Pretty good for the requisite Halloween horror movie.