Quarantine (dvd review)

I’m not going to lie, I was one of those suckers who bought into every single minute of hype behind the train that was Cloverfield.  Maybe it is because of my overwhelming love for everything J.J. Abrams touches.  Maybe it was the idea of a movie shot entirely on a single camera.  Maybe it was those cool viral marketing vids.  Whatever it was, the movie ended up being a huge letdown and left a dirty taste in my mouth for the entire affair.

That being said, it’s easy to understand why I was a skeptic when the trailers for Quarantine hit. 

I knew it was a remake of the foreign film REC., but it also looked so eerily familiar.  I stayed away from it in theaters, not because it looked bad but because of the mess which was Cloverfield. 

Thankfully, this film is far more engaging and rewarding.

To fully understand my enjoyment of Quarantine, it might help to better discuss the problems with Cloverfield.  If anything, Quarantine is a huge improvement of, and succeeds in nearly every way in which Cloverfield failed.

I must say, first, that Quarantine is not necessarily a good film.  It’s a film which succeeds at what it is trying to do, but it still is full of all kinds of problems. 

The first thing it gets right is its characters.  There is no silly love story here, though there are only slight hints at an attraction.  In fact, it’s overwhelmingly fantastic that this film has no love story going on in it.  There is an obvious relationship going on between Angela (female reporter) and Scott (her cameraman), though it is unclear if it’s a friendship between them or one between her and the camera.  Either way, this isn’t a love story and that’s fantastic.

The next thing it does is the excuse for the camera.  Sure,  the argument about whether or not ‘the people need to know’ may get overplayed a bit and become questionable in parts, but for the majority of the film the filming makes a lot of sense.  We aren’t in the hands of a stupid, ignorant, bumbling fool ala Cloverfield.  Here, we’re in the hands of a more than qualified and clearly dedicated professional.  This makes all the difference in the world and is brilliantly handled here.

Another great success is in the creepiness of each scene.  The building and its residence are far more suspenseful than running around an alien-filled New York.  The subtly of each may not be terrifying, but it is effective.  In comparison, there are only a handful of scenes from Cloverfield which really stuck with the viewer.  Here, however, there are dozens of suspenseful scenes which succeed to a high degree.  There is no doubt a level of weakness involved, but it is the filming which makes it all worthwhile. 

John Erick Dowdle, the film’s writer and director, really should be recognized for his strong work here.  It’s clear that his direction and style save the film from being just another fluff piece of horror porn, and his ideas (even if it being a remake) certainly work well here as a whole.

The film is laden with all kinds of problems, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that its entertaining parts are more than worth the price of admission.  It isn’t a perfect film, but it is most likely as close as we’ll get with these kind of onetrickpony flicks.  The film is certainly worth a rental, though some of its elements may be worth the price of the bluray.