Here we are with another American remake for a foreign film with too much subtitle for us lazy Americans to read. The problem is, this is a remake for a film that hasn't even hit DVDs in the country that it was filmed in yet! This film, Quarantine, is the remake of the Spanish film [REC], for those who were wondering.
When I first saw the trailer for this film, I immediately turned it down and bickered about how horrible it was going to be because it was a remake of a film that proved to be the scariest film I've ever seen in my 17 years. [REC] was a very amazing film, with the sense of claustrophobia (which I have), great scares with no musical score, and frightening images that leaves you leaving the lights on when you go to sleep.
Quarantine was unable to surpass the original (like all remakes).
The first thing I noticed from the trailer was that it was shot-by-shot...a direct copy of the original's trailer, which made you assume that the whole film was going to be a shot-by-shot film of the original. And for the most part, it was. But then again, that's something you might expect from a remake, but add in your own little extra scenes and stuff, which they did.
Jennifer Carpenter isn't the greatest actress alive, which is part of the reason for why this movie was a let down. She's terrible at acting mad, and when she does, she doesn't sound serious. I think the best actor was the old woman who they find in her apartment (and is also the first "zombie" we see) when she's pleading for help. But other than that, the acting just isn't that great.
The camera work was an atrocity. The cameraman in this movie was supposed to be an expert considering they were shooting interviews for a news show, but instead, even before the action started, he'd be zooming in and out at unnecessary times and refocusing all the time and it just got out of hand to where you started to get a bit sick after a while. Then when they started getting chased by the zombies, the camera would be bouncing around and then it'd focus on the zombie and be zooming in and out and focusing and refocusing and it just got tiring. It actually got to the point where it didn't seem realistic anymore (not that it seemed that way in the first place...). Also, there were scenes where everyone and all the zombies were supposed to be moving really fast, and to do that, they sped it up, which was extremely obvious and just made it less realistic. And it got really annoying too, since the camera would be moving around fast enough already, then they added the speed up, and it just got nauseating.
There was actually more comedic points in this remake than in the original (which there were only comedic points at the beginning in the original, whereas in this one, the were funny images throughout the film when it was supposed to be scary). The cameraman was more of a joker (and bad at acting, too) and it took away the scaryness.
There were some cool parts in this script though: (SPOILERS)
There was one part where the cameraman continued to smash the camera into a zombie's face until she died. And one of the firemen threw a zombie over the edge of, like, the third story of the building and we watched it fall to the floor. And there are others, but I won't go into detail...
END SPOILERS
The scary parts weren't so scary after all....considering the fact that since most of this was shot-by-shot, I knew when the scary points were coming, but I had fun watching everyone in the theater jump and react to gross and scary scenes.
Then, the final scene, was actually rather comedic, because when they got into the attic, the sound started messing up, and all the dialogue and noise was nothing but techo-ish and one guy actually shouted out "TECHNO!" and then "I am a robot!" which gave the audience some laughs. Finally the sound came back on, with perfect timing, when scary stuff started happening again, except during the whole ordeal with no sound, we missed vital information about where the virus came from and how it is spreading, which I started laughing about, because I think I was the only one in the theater who actually knew what was going on in that scene, considering since I've seen the original.
The ending was a bomb. The monster at the end was not scary and very ineffective. And the very end was the exact copy of the original (at least come up with a different ending! Come on!) which, if you just want to know, is spoiled in the commercials since they show the ending!!! What the heck!?
SO, ANYWAY, this movie was...decent. It had decent gore, it had zombies, it was creepy in some parts, but I really, really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY recommend the original, which I read somewhere that it should be coming onto a Region 1 DVD some time January '09 when this movie comes out on DVD. If you want to know what the original is like before you consider getting it when it comes out on DVD (if it does?), then check out my review for it at:
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-movie/m-1212128842/s-new/But I think you should go see this movie, just for me, because I read somewhere that if this movie does good in theaters, then they might consider releasing the movie "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" in theaters, written and directed by the same people who did this movie, and is also part of the "shaky-cam" genre. Let's just hope that that movie is better...I've been waiting months to see it...
Sean