Review: Quarantine (2008)

[Scott Mendelson]

Quarantine
2008
089 minutes
Rated R (bloody violent and disturbing content, terror and language)

by Scott Mendelson

It is somewhat ironic that a week before seeing this film, my wife and
I found ourselves walking through the Quarantine maze at Knott's Scary
Farm (Knotts Berry Farm does an annual October makeover, where all of
their rides become insanely intricate haunted houses... quite
impressive). I say ironic for two reasons. A) The film Quarantine is
probably the closest thing I've seen on film to the experience of
walking through a haunted house attraction. B) The maze is quite a bit
scarier on a pure visceral level than the film itself.

Not to say the film is bad. It's actually surprisingly affective in
the opening acts, setting up a frighteningly plausible scenario and
plausible slice-of-life characters. Only in the last twenty-minutes or
so does the film become an unwieldy fright fest, with incomprehensible
action and an almost complete lack of pay off.

Some plot - Angela Vidal and Scott Percival are reporter and camera
man from a local news network, sent to do a puff piece on the local
fire department. After a quick get-to-know ya interview segment or
two, the department gets called on an actual emergency and the
reporters tag along. When they get to the apartment building in peril,
they quickly discover that the emergency is note fire-related,
although they'll soon wish it was.

The entirety of the film is shot as if it were the running video
footage from Percival's camera. For the record, this remake of a 2007
Spanish horror film ('REC') is much cleaner and less grainy than
Cloverfield and far less disorienting than The Blair Witch Project.
But we still have that 'something horrible happened just off screen'
bit along with the swirling camera that occasionally denies us key
plot details or major moments.

There are surprisingly few cheap jolts, so the ones that are there are
brutally effective. The biggest advantage that the film has is a cast
made up of veteran character actors and television performers. Our
favorite grizzled Croatian Rade Serbedzija plays the landlord. Steve
Harris, best known as defense attorney Eugene Young on The Practice,
plays the cameraman (while his face is rarely seen, his voice lends a
gravity to the proceedings). Fleshing out the cast is Greg Germann
(from Ally McBeal), Dana Ramirwz from Heroes, film character actor Jay
Hernandez, and Dennis O'Hare (longtime Law And Order fans will
recognize him as guest-starring as four different characters in four
of the best episodes of the series' run). These veterans help flesh
out what would otherwise be stock horror film characters. Everyone is
intelligent, no one is particularly heroic, and they all just feel
like real people trapped in an inexplicable situation (even Steve
Harris is allowed to break down a little after committing a violent
act of self defense).

Alas, after an hour of solid character interplay and potent shocks,
the film turns into a somewhat substandard 'run from the monster'
cliché. Because of the video-based narrative, much of what unfolds in
the last act is difficult to follow and thus hard to appreciate. And,
truth be told, there really is no climax as none of the characters
have any real arcs.

In the end, the film reveals its true intentions. Regardless of the
high caliber of acting and the subtlety of the writing, the film is
merely a haunted house ride. That's no sin, but the film at first
appears striving for something greater, so its descent into
ordinariness is all the more unfortunate. As far as that lack of pay
off, the film basically just ends arbitrarily, with only the barest
hint of explanation as to what just occurred. So much of what came
before is rendered thematically meaningless and our investment in the
characters is rendered moot.

So, in the end, Quarantine is worth seeing for its solid first two
acts, some terrific acting by some favorite character actors, and a
several solid spook-show scares. But it has no real reason for its
existence and its final irrelevance renders the experience rather
hollow.

GRADE: C+
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NOTE - SPOILER!!! Shame on Screen Gems for spoiling a major climactic
moment of the film, both as a button for the trailer and commercials,
and on the poster art. I more or less knew ahead of time, and thus was
annoyed. My wife had no idea and was downright furious as she slowly
realized how the film was going to end because she hadn't seen 'that
scene' yet. Not since the trailer to Cast Away have I seen such
blatant spoiling, made all the worse because most moviegoers won't
know that a major element has been revealed until they're already into
the movie.