Movie Review: Quarantine

Warning: There may be spoilers here.

That said, read on if you are interested, or if maybe you think you want to save $10.

The movie began pretty well. Its premise is that a TV crew consisting of a cameraman and a, let's say, reality TV show hostess, are slated to "shadow" a pair of fire fighters during a night shift. The crew gets a call to head to an apartment building. When they get there, they get locked in along with the tenants of the building and a couple police officers, and none of them knows why.

All hell immediately breaks loose. The little old lady that was the cause of the call to the police and fire department goes ape and tears into a few of the movie's cast. Then, as most zombie movies similarly progress, they get "infected" and the bloodbath continues.

Really, the movie did start out promisingly. Though the camera work was of the style of Blair Witch, which I hated, and Cloverfield, which I didn't see, it had potential. Since the main characters were a professional camera crew, I was practically praying that the camera would not be overly jittery and that I would be able to tell what was going on. For the first half of the movie, that was the case. Then, they decided to stop with the whole clarity thing. I understand the reason; I just don't agree with it. A jittery camera confuses the audience as a way of getting them to identify with the protagonists. I just don't think this trick works, and effectively just irritates the audience. At least that's what it does to me.

The lighting also ended up being schizophrenic. Initially, the movie lighting was fine. The apartment building had lights, and all was well. Then, a little more than halfway into the film, the producer must have run out of money for the electric bill, and the only source of lighting became the camera that acted as the audience's portal to the movie. Then, and I can't IMAGINE why this happened, the camera's light had to go iffy as though the battery was running out, and so there was a bit of a strobe effect through to the end of the movie. When the camera finally gave out, the end of the flick was done in night vision.

I really did think it had promise. It had a script. It had a few likable characters. I feel, though, like they gave up trying to get good scares out of the audience about halfway through the movie, and just gave in to having things jump out at the camera, which they could do because the camera ended up going "wonky." The lighting, the script, and any original scares in the film ended a little more than halfway into the film, though, and the movie degenerated into Blair Witch; no script and no lighting.

Overall, I probably wouldn't recommend shelling out $10 to see it in a theater. If it comes on cable sometime, watch it then. Instead, save your money go to see the new Bond flick, for which we saw a trailer.
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