Quarantine is a 2008 American horror film directed by John Erick Dowdle and starring Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Steve Harris, Rade Šerbedžija, Greg Germann, Bernard White, and Johnathon Schaech. The film is a remake of the Spanish horror film REC and is almost an entire shot for shot remake with a few exceptions such as added scenes and dialogue[4] and is filmed in the "found footage" style. It was released on October 10, 2008 by Screen Gems Pictures. The film features no incidental music, being "scored" with sound effects.[5]
Plot
Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott Percival (Steve Harris), a late night television host and crew duo, set out to film a report on the night shift of a Los Angeles fire station. Angela and Scott are introduced to firefighters Fletcher (Johnathon Schaech) and Jake (Jay Hernandez).
A medical emergency at an apartment complex is reported and the night shift is sent in. Yuri (Rade Šerbedžija) the building manager leads Angela, Scott, the firemen and two police officers, James (Andrew Fiscella) and Danny (Columbus Short), to the apartment of Mrs. Espinoza (Jeannie Epper), the source of prior screaming. Yuri knocks, waits, then unlocks the door and a dog runs out. Inside, Espinoza is hysterical. While trying to subdue the crazed elder, James gets bitten by Espinoza. The police and firemen save him and leave her in the apartment, with Fletcher to keep watch over her.
When they get downstairs, the door is locked from the outside. A voice on the megaphone tells them that they will try to get each one of them out and to listen to the policeman with them. Lawrence (Greg Germann), a veterinarian, tends to the injured policeman when Fletcher falls off a railing and hits the floor of the lobby several stories below. His neck is broken and his bones are shattered, and there are signs of him being bitten as well, though a pulse is still detectable.
Danny and Jake go upstairs. When Angela and Scott follow, they find the cleaning lady dead in her apartment as Ms. Espinoza emerges. Danny is forced to shoot Espinoza after she growls and charges at them, even more hysterical than the prior times she is shown on camera. Upon return downstairs, Danny, Jake, Angela, and Scott learn that all exterior windows and doors are sealed from the outside due to a containment process by police officers outside the building. The voice is heard again telling them not to leave the building and that they will send someone in to assess the situation. All cell phones and cable connections to televisions are jammed as well. Jake and Danny round up a lawyer named Randy (Denis O'Hare), a Swahili-speaking couple named Nadif and Jwadir (Jermaine Jackson and Sharon Ferguson), and a sick woman named Elise Jackson (Stacy Chbosky) and bring them downstairs. During a short lull in the action, Angela interviews Briana (Joey King), the five-year-old daughter of two tenants who is sick with bronchitis. Briana reveals that her father took her sick dog, Max, to the animal hospital, which is why he is not around. Lawrence concludes that the symptoms of those infected are similar to rabies, only much more fast-acting.
Bernard (Bernard White) and Sadie (Dania Ramirez) introduce themselves as a music teacher and his student. In the middle of their interview with Angela, Fletcher, foaming at the mouth, stands up on his broken legs and attempts to attack everyone, but Lawrence sedates him. Bernard, Sadie, Angela, and Scott sneak upstairs to Bernard and Sadie's apartment, where they see Ms. Espinoza's dog. After Randy leaves the elevator, the dog runs after the man and attacks him when the elevator door closes, killing him inside. They arrive at the apartment where there is a television hooked up to an antenna; without the use of cable television. Shaken, they continue to Bernard and Sadie's apartment, and watch as a news report on television where the Police Chief (Michael Potter) mentions to a reporter (Jane Park Smith) that everyone was evacuated from the apartment complex before the police began to quarantine the building. The power goes off moments later, and a noise is heard from another part of the apartment. Elise, rabid and hysterical, attacks Angela, though doesn't succeed in biting her. Scott repeatedly beats Elise's face in with the camera until she is dead. Scott later cleans the blood off the camera. As he is doing so, a figure is seen crossing the upstairs balcony. After a few seconds of letting the moment sink in, the four of them return downstairs leaving the dead Elise in the apartment.
Danny rounds everyone up and informs them that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agents are coming in to give blood tests. Lawrence corrects him by saying the only way to test for rabies is through a brain sample, but Danny insists on what he was told, refusing to accept that it is rabies. While performing a roll call of all the tenants to make sure everyone who is still alive is in the room, he learns that Randy and Elise are dead. There were suspicions of the disease when it came to the African couple as Yuri mentions that the paralytic father of one of them is living with them. Yuri also reveals that the attic is being rented by a man from Boston who has been absent for roughly three months.
CDC agents arrive and take a brain sample from Fletcher after sedating him. Shortly after the extraction begins, Fletcher breaks his restraints and attacks one of the agents. Danny, Jake, and the other agent escape, and lock Lawrence in the room with Fletcher and the bitten CDC agent; Lawrence gets bitten. The surviving CDC agent (Craig Susser) reluctantly explains the situation: a dog in a local animal hospital was found to be infected with an unknown rabies-like illness and attacked all the other animals in the facility. When they checked the collar, the owner was tracked to live here; the dog is Max, Briana's dog. The tenants all become frightened of Briana and insist that her mother Kathy (Marin Hinkle) allow the CDC agent to run tests on the girl to make sure she didn't catch the illness from Max prior to his being admitted into the hospital. Kathy repeatedly tells them that nothing is wrong with her daughter other than a touch of bronchitis, until Briana rapidly shows signs of being rabid and bites Kathy on her cheek. She runs upstairs, and Kathy is handcuffed to the stairwell after she tries to prevent Danny, Jake, and the CDC agent from finding Briana.
Danny, Jake, Angela, and Scott bring a needle with sedative and look for Briana in the dark floors above. They find her hiding, and while attempting to inject her with the sedative, Danny gets bitten. While trying to make their way downstairs Angela, Scott, and Jake run into Mrs. Espinoza, whom Jake quickly kills by hitting her in the face with his sledgehammer.
A few men downstairs fight to contain the infected, but the hungry monsters manage to get in and everyone runs, James spot Kathy and attacks her. Scott, Angela, Jake, Yuri, Wanda (Elaine Kagan), Bernard, and Sadie run into an apartment and lock the infected people out. The CDC agent sitting in an adjacent room reveals that he has been bitten, and it's shown that Sadie was bitten in the hysteria, as well. Bernard, refusing to allow any of the others to harm her in order to protect themselves, tears the plastic from the window in an attempt to obtain help. In response, he is shot by a sniper who misses the others. Yuri remembers that in his apartment, there are keys to get to the sewers from the basement, but is then attacked by the CDC agent in the other room. Wanda is attacked by Sadie, forcing Jake, Scott, and Angela to run to Yuri's apartment in a frantic search for the keys, as they battle with a few infected. They managed to kill the dog and break Sadie's neck.
After they find the keys, Jake and Scott fight off several infected tenants until Yuri bites Jake. Danny barrels up the stairs roaring and chases Angela and Scott into the attic, belonging to the aforementioned absent Bostonian.
They discover evidence (including newspaper articles, a recorded tape, caged rodents, and more) that explains the man from Boston was part of a nihilist cult that broke into a military biological facility to steal and engineer the Armageddon Virus (a doomsday disease that was supposed to wipe out humanity). It was basically a super powerful version of rabies that started everything in the apartment. Scott investigates a noise in the attic and ducks from being attacked by an infected boy (Benjamin Stockham) who destroys the light on Scott's camera. Angela and Scott use the night vision setting on the camera to discover an emaciated man (Doug Jones), most likely the man from Boston, as he emerges from another room. He walks past them, just barely getting by without encountering either survivor, but attacks Scott when Angela inadvertently makes a noise. The infected man starts eating Scott, but then hears and attacks Angela, knocking her and the camera to the floor. Angela tries to crawl back to the camera, but is grabbed by the infected man and dragged screaming into the darkness.
Cast
Marketing and release
Microsoft Pictures launched a viral marketing campaign for the film including a MySpace page,[6] Facebook page[7] and official website.[8] The marketing used commentary advertising the film as based on an American government cover-up. The producers have also commented on producing a video game based on the film.[citation needed]
In a strange decision from the studio, the final scene of the movie, that of the protagonist being dragged backwards by an unseen creature in night-vision, was included in the film's trailer, nearly every television commercial for the film, and even the theatrical release poster.
Quarantine had an initial release date of October 17, 2008, but was moved forward and released on October 10, 2008.[9] Quarantine was released February 17, 2009, on DVD and Blu-Ray.
In Australia, the original release date was November 6, which was pushed back to December 4.
Reception
Quarantine, which was not screened for US critics,[10] received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 59% of critics gave positive reviews based on 73 reviews.[11] Metacritic reported the film had an aggregate score of 54/100, based on 10 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".[12] Quarantine received a 7/10 from Bloody Disgusting[13] and Fangoria magazine gave the film a 3.5/4.
In Australia, Empire magazine was lukewarm in its response. "Just when you thought it was safe to declare Spanish zombie flick [Rec] one of the year’s best horrors, the Hollywood remake is already squatting upon us." They were critical of the rushed and copied-verbatim style of the remake. They weren't entirely dismissive, however, adding that "it shows the strength of the source that Quarantine still offers a clammy, pulsing, fingernail-scraping experience." They also stated "while Jennifer Carpenter shows she hasn’t lost the lungs from her death-rattling screams in The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, she forever feels like an actress playing a reporter...Any edginess has been painted over with a thick slap of Hollywood gloss, which begs the question: doesn't a slick remake of a reality horror rather defeat the point?" They finished by labeling the film "efficient enough" but that viewers who had already seen [REC] should steer clear.[14]
On its opening day, the film grossed $5,379,867, ranking #1 in the box office.[15] The film opened at #2, earning $14,211,000 in its opening weekend. Its total gross-to-date is: $37 million.[16]
Awards
- 2009: Reaper Awards "Best Zombie Film"[17]
References
External links
