They won't let us out! (Quarantine 2008)

279.

Quarantine

5/10

The letter Q gave us a movie that can, pretty much, describe what is coming up to the past year. I have to be careful with some of the words that I use on this one, as I was put into Instagram jail when I review Outbreak. The told me I was spreading misinformation when they picked up on the C-word and I mean COVID. This time I will be as careful as possible in describing anything regarding the topic but thankfully we haven't had anywhere near the issues the people in this movie are going to face. Quarantine is a found footage film and a remake of REC, which is a Spanish movie of the same concept. Let's get down to it and see what we find.

The move starts with a news reporter named Angela Vidal and her cameraman filming a report about firefighters and we focus on one cocky firefighter along with another reserved firefighter.

 Many a movie of this coming scenario have been made and if you had to hazard a guess, you'd be looking at the reporter and reserved firefighter being the last ones standing. After being called out to an apartment block, they are greeted by some worried tenants as they make their way to an old lady's place. They heard some screaming and as they enter the room, the old lady is clearly not right. Blood down her front, standing in the darkness, before she heads to bite into the cocky firefighter's neck. They run out of the room and the movie becomes a fight for survival. One by one, the residents drop, only to rise again as bloodthirsty zombies. 

They have been blocked off from the outside world, as the army roll in and shoot anyone trying to escape. They are reporting nothing as to what is going on inside the apartment block but some health investigators head inside, kitted up in hazmat suits. A vet living in the apartment believes that it is rabies, but his primary concern is his father, who is bedbound upstairs. It is actually the reporter and her cameraman who are left standing as humans within the apartment and they are pushed to the attic area by the zombies. After entering they find cutouts from newspapers explained a doomsday cult and a stolen virus from a hidden facility, making everything a little clearer. The pair find a hatch in the darkness but they are no longer alone. Some sort of shrivelled up human, who is seemingly blind and deaf, is now scrambling around the attic until it comes upon the cameraman. The reporter picks up the camera to look around using the night vision and after pointing it in the direction of the noise, her partner is being eaten. She can't keep her shit together and makes too much noise, being attacked herself the camera lands in front of her, showing the viewers as she gets dragged into the darkness and the movie ends. 

I have now seen the Spanish and American versions of this movie and the Spanish is by far the better and more immersive. This type is a breath of fresh air though as a shorter horror and one that does not have the typical ending. I do enjoy an ending that much more when nobody makes it out alive and the situation remains unresolved. Where do we go from here and did anyone escape? There is a sequel to this movie, which seems to be centred around an airport terminal but am yet to sit down and watch it. I don't even know if it was an after-effect from this story or completely separate. The storyline was pretty conventional for the genre as the reserved character steps up, our main characters if we can call them that, last for most of the movie. The end is the turning point for not being our usual conclusion. 

Each person brought a different characteristic to the movie with all styles of stereotypes and member of society involved. This, at times, compliments the storyline as it causes conflicts between the residents but our main two characters would be the news reporter and the quiet fireman. I could include the cameraman as he is always in attendance but only at the end is he in front of the camera and not in the best of circumstances. Jennifer Carpenter came and went in this movie as our lead female and considering it's been 13 years since this movie came out, I can't remember seeing her in anything since. As for our lead fireman Jake played by Jay Hernandez, I far from recognised the fact that he played Diablo in Suicide Squad. Does that show how much of a lack of impact the movie had on me or just the guy himself?

This movie had been on my list for a long time. There seemed to be a moment when I loved to watch found footage movies and horror will always be up there for me. This movie ticked the boxes for what was expected but at the same time, ticking boxes is all well and good, but it needed to try and go that little further. It felt like it could have been made by anyone, anywhere and the redeeming feature for me was that no one actually made it out alive rather than having a finish that easy. I may go and watch the straight to DVD sequel but that's only if I stumble across it by accident.