Quarantine

Dexter’s sister (Deborah Morgan) is in this new movie called Quarantine. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads for it; they appear as screen-filling pop-ups with no visible close button. You can’t get out of them because you’re fucking quarantined. A bunch of readers over on Chud got pissed and complained about it a lot. They must not understand the meaning of the word quarantine. When you’re quarantined you can complain all you want but no one is going to give a shit, no one will hear you, no one will let you out of the sealed-off situation, so you might as well shut your fucking puckered butthole of a mouth and deal with it, pussy.

I know you dirty little pricks really enjoyed that Danny Boyle movie, 28 Days Later. You would. Quarantine is kind of like that, but with less of Cillian Murphy’s wiener. Some weird rage-inducing virus infects people and causes them to beat the living shit out of each other and eat each other and kill and maim and bite and froth at the mouth and shriek and run. But you like that kind of stuff, don’t you, you filthy ballsack-toucher. It fits your M.O.. All the gory action takes place in a four story apartment complex somewhere in Los Angeles. Dexter’s sister plays a TV personality for a show that follows workers around on their nighttime jobs, kind of like that old Dave Attell show but without all the drinking. On the night portrayed, she is tailing the fire department. But you already know this. You’ve seen the trailer.

All of the action in the movie is filmed on one handheld camera. Remember Blair Witch, Cloverfield, and Diary of the Dead? Of course you do, you pinched rectum. Quarantine has that same shaky, in the middle of the action, blurry, quick moving, vomit inducing camera work, though not as bad as The Bourne Ultimatum. The cameraman’s name is Scott; I only mention this because he deserves an award for being the most perseverant cameraman in the history of everything. This guy doesn’t miss a beat. At one point in the movie, he’s at the top of the stairs filming a group of people descending in front of him. A quick cut later, he’s at the bottom of the stairs filming that same group of people as they come down the last few steps. Scott can teleport. That’s an essential skill for a lone cameraman. Another necessary skill: Scott continues shooting even when it would make more sense to drop the camera and run for his fucking life because he’s about to be eaten by a nearly naked freak in stained tighty-whiteys. But you like those tighty-whiteys, don’t you? You want to see that.

So, this group of people gets quarantined in the building by the CDC. CDC agents shoot at any of the people who try to get out. They blockade the doors and windows. They act like real assholes. This makes me think that they’re probably not the CDC, but some black-ops government agency that wants to obtain this virus for nefarious purposes or some shit but the movie doesn’t really get into that so maybe there’ll be a sequel. It’ll be DTV. Quarantine 2: Was the Dog’s Name Max? It’ll star Michael Madsen, Shannyn Sossamon, and Redman. They’ll probably use two cameras instead of one, just to up the ante. You’ll rent it in hopes of seeing Shannyn’s boobs because that’s the type of person you are, someone who would rent a Michael Madsen DTV movie just for the prospect of viewing a pair of naked jugs. Pathetic. Hell Ride.

******Spoiler Part*******
Do you want to know how Quarantine ends? Guess what, you already do. You saw the trailer, remember? You saw the camera in night vision mode, all greens and reflective eyes, Dexter’s sister being dragged away while screaming. That’s it. That’s how it ends. The people who came up with the trailer and marketing campaign for this movie failed epically (as the kids on the net like to say, you know…EPIC FAIL). They give away the ending. I’m sitting there in the theatre, completely alone…yes, I’m the only fucking person in the theatre, I’m not lying, no one else came in at any point during the movie, first time this has ever happened to me and I’m anticipating the famous scene from the trailer that I saw about fifty times, and it hasn’t happened yet, not yet, and I know the movie is getting close to the end and all of the sudden the camera goes into night vision mode and all the tension drains out of the empty theatre and out of my amazingly sculpted body and I’m left with a serene sense of awareness because I realize that I’ve already seen the ending and then the ending happens and I smile, I smile for those assholes who made the trailer and put that specific image all over the internet and on the movie poster and ruined my movie experience because of it. I’m not dumb; all the other single-camera movies I mentioned at the beginning of this review have the same ending, i.e. the found tape that explains what happened because no one was left alive to tell the story. You can thank Cannibal Holocaust for that. I just like to be surprised when that final moment happens. The Quarantine trailer makes that impossible.

You know what’s weird? Even with all my complaining and bitching and stuff, I still thought this was a pretty cool movie. The single camera isn’t too shaky or annoying, only in a couple of short parts. It creates a sense of isolation and claustrophobia that is essential to the story. There are some good jump scares and an intense scene that is reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. I really enjoyed Jennifer Carpenter’s (Dexter’s sister) performance; she plays her part with enthusiasm and conviction. She really seems scared. Jay Hernandez, who plays one of the firefighters, literally kicks the shit out of everything. It’s pretty awesome. Finally, the gore effects are top notch. I recommend Quarantine to sick, disturbed individuals like you with your spastic colons and your tiny little chiclet teeth.