Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) is a reporter for a fictitious reality show following the real lives of Los Angeles Firefighters. While filming the firefighters on what appeared to be a routine medical call in an old apartment building, Vidal, her cameraman, the firefighters, and the residents of the building are detained with no explanation by the military. Panic starts to set in and some of the residents start acting abnormally. The building is put on lockdown and all forms of communication in and out are cut off. When the power gets shut off zombie like residents have a feeding frenzy on the scared and paranoid apartment dwellers.
Quarantine is a very interesting twist on the Zombie genre. Without going into details the cause of the zombie like residents and the quarantining of the building is something that was very unexpected and unique (though the film itself is a remake). The film itself many horror buffs will say isn’t scary; this is true to a certain extent. There are a few spots in the film that are guaranteed to make you jump but for the most part there are not the scares that have become mainstays in slasher and mainstream horror films. Instead the fear is something that we are afraid of everyday in real life but because we have become so desensitized to on-screen violence the fear doesn’t translate well in a world of Saw and Hostel.
What could be scarier than the military, the police, and federal agencies, forcefully detaining you from leaving a building with no explanation? This is a real fear that we don’t think about because it is something that we believe would never happen. In this situation however it would be incredibly scary to be trapped, petrified, and have your own government working against you. On top of all this the small frame that we are able to see from the hand-held camera confronts a common fear of claustrophobia. This is literally a claustrophobic world that these people are confined and their fear is exacerbated by the horrors that are inside their barricaded environment.
Generally I disagree with the directorial decision to use the hand-held camera view. It generally is not as aesthetically pleasing and is difficult for the audience to become invested in. For some reason or another this style has become prevalent over the last decade especially in the horror genre and in many cases it isn’t done very well, however in this film I think it works. It provides like earlier stated, a claustrophobic feeling, and I think the reality show approach makes it believable enough that these people would care about filming something when their life is at stake. I think overall the film is scary the way that Night of the Living Dead was scary. Many socio-political issues are presented and used to provide a “what if” scenario which I found to be very scary and believable. Overall I give this film 3 and ½ “R’s” out of 5.
