Nine years ago, we were treated to a tepid thriller called The Blair Witch Project, which was the starting point for the whole "shaky-cam revolution." Countless films later, you'd think you've had enough. People have gotten queasy and nauseous over the constant shaking of the cameras, made to look like some moron who couldn't hold a video camera to save his life, was video-taping the footage. Surprsingly, though, Quarantine manages to pull itself from the schlock and deliver itself as a decent thriller.
The whole thing revolves around Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter), a night-time field reporter for a local Los Angeles TV studio. She gets the honor of seeing what it's like in the night of a L.A. fire department. Early in the movie, it's just standard banter. The fireman show her around the building, they play some games, they have a good time. Not soon afterward, they get a medical call to an apartment building. Tagging along, Angela and her cameraman, Scott (Steve Harris) go inside the building to discover a woman foaming at the mouth and then attacking one of the firemen. Moments later, doors are bolted and everyone, from tenants to fireman to Angie, are trapped inside. Something strange is going on and the CDC has quarantined the entire building. People inside the building are getting this strange disease and passing it along with whomever they bite into, and with Angie and Scott recording every moment of it along the way.
Based off a 2007 Spanish film titled [Rec], this is actually a really effective thriller. There are quite a few scares that you can garnish with this tale. There's a few moments of dullness and the shaky-cam can get a bit irritating, but it's more subdued than in films like Cloverfield or Diary of the Dead. Jennifer Carpenter delivers an exceptional performance. She makes you really believe she is scared shitless. This is a fun and entertaining thriller that goes for shocks rather than gore.
3 stars
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