Quarantine (2008) Review

CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA!

WEEK 5: REMAKES AND REHASHES

Quarantine (2008)

Hollywood has had mixed success remaking foreign horror movies. Some turn out to be pretty good in their own right, like The Ring (which I reviewed last week), while others turn out the total opposite. Maybe the concept doesn’t translate as well to American audiences, or maybe it doesn’t respect the original vision, or maybe, it’s a plain and simple cash grab. Quarantine is a remake of the Spanish horror film REC, and Hollywood jumped on the remake so fast they got it out to American audiences within a year of REC’s release. Sometimes remakes feel quite similar to the original, but in this case, it’s like watching the exact same movie again.

The plot and events of Quarantine are nearly identical to REC’s. A reporter and her cameraman tag along with some firefighters to a 911 call from an apartment block. They go in and find an old lady who goes crazy and attacks them. They try to get medical backup and get out of the apartment block, but find it has been quarantined because of a virus outbreak that turns everyone into ferocious zombies. The reporter and her cameraman document the efforts of everyone trying to survive, as more and more zombies start popping up. They discover the cause of the virus, which is one of the only differences from REC. In REC, the zombies were made by a demonic possession contained in a virus, but here, it’s a mutated strain of rabies. Finding this out doesn’t improve their chances, however, because they are trapped with no way out.

Quarantine is a clone of REC, so if you’ve seen REC, you’ve already seen Quarantine. Not only is it the same, it’s inferior. REC had genuinely terrifying scenes and was disorienting in the best possible way. Quarantine feels like just another found footage horror flick with all the found footage clichés. One cliché that can’t seem to be avoided in any found footage is the need to film everything, even if the need to do so seems completely lame. The beginning of the film is full of bullshit about the firefighters that does nothing to make us like them more as characters and just makes the first fifteen minutes of the movie dull. Once the action gets underway, the movie does improve. For found footage, it’s not as nausea inducing as most. The zombies are ferocious but not particularly interesting or original. With REC, there was a sense of dread throughout the whole movie, but Quarantine’s horror moments are sporadic, and the sense of dread doesn’t take hold until about half way through. It’s nice that it isn’t just full of jump scares, but one thing that really bothered me was the ending being given away by the poster and DVD cover, showing the reporter being dragged away into the darkness (again, nearly the exact same as REC’s ending).

Quarantine is good for a one time viewing if you’ve never seen REC, but I would recommend watching the far superior REC instead and skip this remake. Unless you can’t stand the subtitles, there’s no point in picking this remake over the original.