Quarantine (2008)

Rating: R

Country: US

Running Time: 89 minutes

Director: John Erick Dowdle

Starring: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, Jay Hernandez, Jonathan Schaech, etc

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After the overwhelmingly positive reception and responses worldwide for Spanish atmospheric, claustrophobic horror film REC (Which I have yet to see), It was a matter of time before us Americans grabbed our greasy hands on the project. Reinvented in the US with an identical, implied sentiment, Quarantine was born. Although obviously not approached and applauded in the same league as its father individual, it mostly hits all the right marks and jubilantly retains the Cinéma vérité format. Now that a sequel has been announced and confirmed, we can surely look forward to REC 2. But for now, we need to boost up our expectations and anticipation with this. To start off, the shaky-cam (And it looks like I'm the only one that adores it) presentation and layout is tremendous. It almost is simultaneously on the corresponding page as a documentary. This formula can also be found in The Blair Witch Project. Anyway, it's incredibly realistic. Also, the infected are vastly detailed and can be separated by their attributes and peculiarity. To add on to my admiration of them, they kill millions of innocent bystanders. Even animals are exposed to the contaminated condition they carry (A big dog assaults a man and resumes to bite into his organs). The violence (The rating is very way off) is pitiless and callously rough. This may be the most violent and bloody film of 2008 in my honest opinion. If you're weak and aren't vomit-resistant, you may want to skip out on this. Flesh is insensitively pulled and mangled apart from bodies, infected puncture into different humans in many places with gory results and guts and bones are literally ripped out of both men and women's physique. I haven't seen REC as stated before, but I'm sure it isn't as bad as this. The cringe-inducing terror built up in the film is thunderous and sends uneasy messages into your mind and stomach to turn it off. Then, it immediately explodes in your face in the last 30 minutes. Everybody (HUGE SPOILER) dies in the end, racking up even more apprehension. Trepidation makes up a big chunk of Quarantine you see, and it flourishes. This is all the good. Now it's time to move onto the ugly. First of all, we have to succumb to 20 minutes of nonsense in a fire station, where we are led to believe this will suck. I congratulate Dowdle from saving us from this disastrous 20 minutes. Next, it becomes so shady at moments you can't tell what's going on. Yes I said I loved this camera substance: the angles, shots etc. But, this counts only as the see able quantitys and components. Last but not least, I hate Steve Harris! I don't know what it is about him. His presence just makes me sick. Aargh! And no, I'm not racist because the cop in this movie was astounding in my view. Overall, Quarantine may very well be the best horror film of 2008, due to massive productions of crap being made by Hollywood and other posers who think they have talent that get noticed by the mainstream while the actually gifted filmmakers don't even get a mention or remark. Hardly superb, but still good.

Pros: Nice shaky-cam style, detailed infected, Grueling and unsettling deaths....Sure! Nice build-up of tension and racks up all the right scares without any sound other than talking and other noises.

Cons: Steve Harris sucks, implausible beginning, Yes the shaky-cam is amazing, but not when too dark.

Recommended? For the most part

6/10