Horror Movie Night: Quarantine

The Blair Witch Project is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, maybe my #1 (though who would bother to make such lists...). Unfortunately, it seems to have inspired a genre which I have seen referred to as "reality horror," which means that the film is presented as a realistic, often real-time, chronicle of events, filmed or taped by the characters. This is perfect for a low-budget film like Blair Witch or the earlier The Last Broadcast, but the two others I've seen recently of the genre, Cloverfield and Quarantine, have medium-range budgets, mostly, I assume, eaten up with digital effects, which would seem to go against the aesthetic of reality horror. Cloverfield was clever and watchable (though showing too much of the monster was a flaw), but Quarantine makes me wonder if the limit of this kind of filmmaking has already been reached.

A young TV reporter is taping a "cute news" story in which she and a cameraman are shadowing a group of night shift firemen--as with Cloverfield, this opening set-up sequence is dreadfully slow, and ultimately almost totally unnecessary as further characterization is non-existent. When they're called out to an apartment building for an unspecified medical emergency, they find an old lady with blood all over her nightgown, foaming at the mouth. When they try to help, she attacks them, biting some of them and throwing one fireman over the stairs (the best effect of the movie). Then they find that they and the other tenants have been locked in the building by the police; all they're told is that help will be forthcoming. It's not

Given the title, it's not really a spoiler to say that the police and the CDC have put the building under quarantine; apparently, the old lady had some kind of super-duper mutant strain of rabies which is, of course, spread by biting. From here on in, the movie is a variation on any slasher film as the characters get bitten and killed off one by one. Yes, the hunky fireman (Jay Hernandez) and the pretty reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) are among the last left alive. There is one other good stunt, also involving someone plummeting down the stairs, a couple of grisly flesh-eating scenes, including one directly inspired by the original Night of the Living Dead, and a pointless nihilistic ending which feels lazy rather than earned.

I really didn't like this movie. To be honest, the main reason is the lead, Jennifer Carpenter who, I'm guessing in the name of "realism," gives a grating, over-the-top performance as the traditional hysterical heroine. By the halfway mark, Don & I were both yelling at the TV things like "Dear Jesus, die already!" or "Will someone please bite this unpleasant creature and put her and us out of our misery?" The fault is probably with the director, who thought this would be a "realism" plus, but no matter what we say, we don't go to movies to see reality, we go to be entertained, and I can't imagine anyone who would find her irritating screaming and crazy hand gestures (which get absolutely laughable in the climax in which she's in the dark in a room with a monster and she can't see but we can see her) entertaining. Sadly, her hunky co-star (pictuerd) who is more low-key, never takes off his shirt, an act which might have added a half-a-star to my rating (if I used star ratings, which I don't).

I had a big problem with suspension of disbelief all through the film: Would the firemen really let the cameraman keep filming when the first rabies lady goes bananas? Would a reporter this ditzy and annoying really have a job at a big-city TV station (based on our local news, I guess the answer to this would actually be, yes)? Once they all figured out what was happening, would they really stay together in one room and risk infection rather than go back to their apartments?--this point is actually brought up by a character, but it's dismissed immediately, cuz otherwise there'd be no movie. The plot is serviceable, and I think this would have been a better movie with a more traditional filming style--there are almost no effective scare moments, because most of the sudden shocks are caught by the camera jerking around like crazy, blurring everything and ruining the jolt we might otherwise get. Obviously, I can't recommend this one. Watch Blair Witch again instead.