A few months ago I did a review for the surprisingly creepy Spanish flick
[REC] in anticipation for the opening of its US remake,
Quarantine. Despite thinking that “Blair Witch Vision” hadn’t been a viable movie making technique since the turn of the century, leave it to those bloody Spaniards to prove me wrong. Damn inquisitioning conquistador perros del infierno…
Angela Videl is a reporter for “The Night Shift”, a television show that focuses on the behind-the-scenes lives of those lucky few insomniacs who work the graveyard shift. Instead of shadowing the truly interesting night owls of the after dark work force like Travis Bickle or Harvey Keitel’s character in Bad Lieutenant (must... wash... Keitel... nudity... from... brain... with... bleach...), tonight Angela and her cameraman Scott are tagging along with the members of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Being an Americanization, naturally there's A LOT more innuendo going around here as George and Jake, the ‘fighters assigned to keep Angela occupied, both make attempts to put the mack on their guest; one with a modicum of subtlety, the other under the impression that the way into Victoria’s Secret is bombarding her with dirty jokes until she sits on your face... in an effort to suffocate you.
What starts off as a night of sliding down poles, getting the elementary school kids' tour, and other “Today Show” type fluff reporting turns into an Action News story that lives up to its billing. Angela's boys are called out to an apartment building to investigate an old woman going all "banshee crack-head" on the place. From here on, you can pretty much cut and paste whatever I said about [REC]. Just add an extra pinch of pepper here and some MSG there and that's about right.
One of my biggest fears about Quarantine wasn't pissing myself in terror and screaming like a little girl in front of people I respect, but that ever present dread that Hollywood was going to treat the source material like Jodie Foster on a pinball machine... a KISS pinball machine though, because Gene Simmons needs to snake his unholy mouth tentacle into every wallet possible. Though Tinsel Town managed to keep the most important aspects of what made [REC] great, there are a few minute things that nagged me just enough to keep this flick from platinum perfection on the pedestals here in our Hall of Judgment. First, some of the cam work feels a little too “cinematic”, taking you out of the whole “in the action” atmosphere that's the movie's entire selling point. Speaking of things that disrupt the effect, I really think the cast should have been strictly populated with unknown actors. It was great watching [REC] as an ignorant American because I didn't know anybody on screen. so to me they were just as normal and human as any of the teaming masses that throw their cigarettes butts into the front yard of my building. While watching Quarantine, instead of being dragged into a nightmarish world of everyday people experiencing abject terrors first hand, I was instead distracted by the nagging curiosity of where I'd seen some of these actors before. Jenn Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Greg Germann, even John Schaech hiding behind a big goofy '70s porn mustache? They're distracting. The good thing about Blair Witch? Three nobodies no one knew or cared about. They were so plain that I'll bet some of their family members had seen the flick without even knowing who they were. Three faces that you watch on so-called "found film footage" and, even knowing it's not real, it still works because you're not shouting out "Hey! That's the guy from Weekend At Bernies!" half way through the second reel.
Beyond the cast, for a dude lugging a TV camera around for hours and being thrown into a life-or-death situation, Scott’s shot work feels too calm, too steady. That camera’s pretty fucking’ durable too, considering he beats a rabid woman to death with it and gets little more than a temporary loss of microphone and a smattering of red on his lens. In [REC], that dude's equipment took a serious beating and the damage was noticable! Also, the emaciated ghoul from the film's finale isn’t as grotesquely vomit inducing as [REC]’s, but then it’s hard to find people that under-nourished without groups of pissy housewives protesting your production studio for exploiting them… unless they’re being used as guests on “Maury” or “Dr. Phil", in which it's not exploitation, it's "creating public awareness of serious problems". Finally, the cops are a little more eager to use lethal force against the quarantined, even going as far as gunning down one of the quarantinees without concern for the gathering crowds and other media gadflies in the area. Then again, this is the LAPD we’re talking about. They gun down people like my mailman delivers plain brown envelopes to me stamped "For Addressee ONLY": 6 days a week and right on schedule.
On the improvement side of things though, Quarantine makes a few tweaks and squeaks on [REC] that'll give your taint a tingle. For starters, the cast has been expanded to up the body count by a couple more corpses, and we also get the addition of dogs to the mix. There was a definite place for spooky pooch play in the original movie, but it failed to deliver. But, as Cujo and the first Resident Evil game taught us, the idea of a viral infection gets 10 fucking times freakier when it's being carried by four legs and fangs. So kudos to the Quarantine folks for realizing that. Finally, the biggest adjustment comes from the origins of the film's resident infection. Rather than go with [REC]'s religious back story, Quarantine opts for a more believable “homegrown biological terrorism” scenario. Going with the new scientific reasoning rather than the more supernatural original version actually makes the concept more accessible for broader audiences and it putties up some of the small cracks in the [REC] plot, so I’m cool with it. Think of it like a prequel-of-sorts to 28 Days Later.
And so, the final verdict? See this movie. Get off your ass, get down to your local DVD rental place (before it becomes the newest notch on the recession's big wooden raping stick), rent it, and fucking watch it immediately... you know... cuz late charges piss everybody off. Or you can NetFlix it, rent it online, or just pop that big "HOLLYWOOD" sign a "go fuck your granny!" middle digit and pirate the shit from the world wide wasteland. Either way, stop renting digital diarrhea like Made of Honor, do yourself and those around you a favor, and watch Quarantine! Uncle Scrotor has spoken!
Moral of the Story: If
Night of the Living Dead taught us nothing else (well, beyond that it doesn’t pay to be a black guy in a horror movie), it’s that you ALWAYS kill the little sick girl first!
Remake of: [REC]
