MOOVIE REVIEW : QUARANTINE (English - 2008)

MOVIE REVIEW : QUARANTINE (English - 2008)

Category : Horror, Suspense / Starring : Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Harris

She took home the 2006 MTV Movie Award for 'Best Frightened Performance' for her role in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a rather spooky and convincing performance; and now Jennifer Carperter is back with another scary instalment, only this time she's not the monster.

Quarantine_Jennifer Carpenter

Angela Vidal (Carpenter) is a reporter assigned to cover with her partner cameraman, Scott, the night shift of a pair of firemen working at the Los Angeles fire station. Hoping to get some action of the firemen recorded, they both soon get much more than what they bargained for. A seemingly ordinary 911 distress call leads all of them to an apartment building downtown, where the medical emergency becomes a horrid nightmare for all of them with the residents that night. A mysterious sick old woman in one of the units starts the strings of numerous attacks and breed of predators, which soon becomes a relentless run-and-hide ordeal as they find themselves locked and quarantined. All exits are sealed and the whole building guarded, prohibiting them from escaping, and they are left to die one by one inside.

Quarantine_Elaine Kagan & Jay Hernandez

A rather simple plot, but hey, since when do we expect horror movies to have a thick plot, to get us pondering or evaluating. What I like about this movie is how well they adopted the reality approach, adopted by movies like Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, where the whole story is captured by the handy-cam of one of the characters. While the scary element in Blair Witch Project wasn't quite enough and the whole experience of watching Cloverfield was totally nauseating and annoying for me, Quarantine came off a clear winner of this genre. Kudos to the director, John Erick Dowdle! And I just have to reiterate here how disappointing it was when I watched Cloverfield, where nothing of the initial suspense led to any great climax, viewers were treated with 'gimpses' of the rather unimpressive monsters and of course, a total nauseating viewing experience throughout the whole movie. Dowdle managed to give us the realistic feel of the movie without making us want to puke at the end!

Quarantine_Jennifer Carpenter 2

Jennifer Carpenter again succeeds to impress us with her convincing performance, this time as the fiesty yet vulnerable and desperate victim. This woman just fits into the horror genre so well! I would strongly recommend this movie to be watched on big screens rather than on telly. Most of the viewers in the cinema left the movie that night still gripped with suspense, a total satisfaction for horror/suspense fan like myself! .

The movie trailer:

  Rating : B+