Quarantine (film)



The Blair Witch Project meets Twenty Eight Days Later, Quarantine is the US remake of the Spanish horror film REC. It tells the story of a news reporter Angela Videl (Jennifer Carpenter) trailing a local squad of firemen when they get called to a nearby apartment complex. Cue zombies, and soon enough the CDC puts the place into Lockdown.

It has a straight to DVD sequel completely unrelated to REC 2 that came out in 2011.

Quarantine contains examples of:

 * Apocalyptic Log
 * Black Dude Dies First: Averted twice in that
 * Camera Abuse: And how. At one point, it's actually used as a weapon.
 * Closed Circle: Enforced. One guy rips open the sheet of paper that the the Center for Disease Control has put over the building and gets shot by a sniper for his troubles.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death: Most of the deaths. Some much worse then others.
 * Death By Pragmatism: An aggravating instance of it.  declares he's going back to his apartment and lock himself in. As soon as he gets off the elevator, he encounters an infected dog and runs back into the elevator. The dog follows.
 * Developing Doomed Characters: For the first 15-20 minutes, the movie is focused on just hanging around a fire station filming a documentary called "The Night Shift". Then the fire department is called to the apartment complex and the film shifts into gear.
 * Downer Ending: The last shot of the film is . Or, rather than illuminating the spoiler, look at the top of this page.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: The victims of The Virus.
 * Foreign Remake: Of the Spanish film REC.
 * Genre Blind: At least half the carnage could have been avoided if the characters had simply closed the doors behind them or restrained the people who had been bitten. They can kind of get away with it when they don't know what was happening, but once it's made clear, they still fall victim to the genre.
 * Indeed, once they know, they still approach residents who are standing perfectly still, with a vacant look on their faces. After the first time this ends up getting someone either attacked or killed, you'd think they'd learn that this is not a good idea.
 * Hope Spot: Near the end it's mentioned there is maybe a way out of the building through the sewer system.
 * Gory Discretion Shot: In the sequel, played straight then subverted.
 * Improvised Weapon: Notably, the video camera, at one point.
 * In-Universe Camera
 * It Gets Worse: Systematically, every time the situation seems to get somewhat under control,
 * I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: Straight and Subverted with Lawrence, who is a vet.
 * Jittercam
 * Kill'Em All
 * Littlest Cancer Patient: Subverted. She's infected, too, and she's an Undead Child.
 * Neck Snap
 * Not a Zombie: The cops refuse to accept that the people are becoming zombies, even after being all but told this outright.
 * Not Using the Zed Word
 * Nothing Is Scarier
 * Open-Heart Dentistry: First aid is provided by the only resident with medical experience: a veterinarian, who notices the virus's similarity to rabies.
 * Poor Communication Kills: Repeatedly.
 * Room Full of Crazy
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog
 * Sound-Only Death:
 * Stairwell Chase
 * Synthetic Plague: The rabies infecting everyone in the building is revealed to be
 * Title Drop
 * Trailers Always Spoil: The last shot of the movie is in the trailer, the official site AND the one-sheet, as well as the lack of any survivors being stated in all those forms.
 * Unbreakable Weapons: The camera that was used to beat a zombie dead, lens first and hit by a zombie several times without so much as messing with the video quality, let alone damaging it.
 * The Un-Reveal: The origin of the virus is implied to have something to do with "the man from Boston," who has newspaper clippings about a Doomsday virus on his wall. When the survivors discover a dictation machine in his room, you'd assume that it would reveal the virus's origins and the man's motives, but the speed is set too low to be comprehensible. Rather than adjust the speed, the survivors simply abandon it, leaving the details unknown. The newspaper clippings supply enough information to piece together the story, which the sequel expands.
 * Vader Breath: The CDC personnel
 * The Virus: What makes the zombies.