Quarantine

Warning: Spoilers below

At first look, I perceived Quarantine to be one of those standard zombie movie where all those undead maniacs will start rampaging after a bunch of people. Personally, I prefer zombie movies as opposed to other genres in the horror films as there's just something intriguing and adrenaline pumping in those ghoulish chasers against the survivors. It gives some sort of post-apocalyptic and nihilistic feeling with all those world infection stuff etc. The Resident Evil trilogy, the brilliantly done 28 days later and 28 weeks later are my favourites.

Quarantine is actually the English-version remake of the award-winning Spanish movie REC. The movie starts with a cameraman, Scott recording a nervous reporter, Angela Vidal who is covering a story on firemen working in the night shift. At first, I was not aware of it and then I realised that the audience are actually seeing the entire movie through the lens of the camera carried by the cameraman. So, Quarantine adopts the shaky camerawork style which was popularised in the Blair Witch movie. This gives it a documentary-like aura to it, or an amateur video cam view of stuff instead of the commonly known stable movies and film style. It felt a little like a first-person shooter at times. The cameraman is ubiquitous and his presence is felt there by the characters. Lol, the cameraman even interacts with the characters in the movie as he is essentially one of the characters too!

At the beginning, it was light-hearted and fun and I was beginning to wonder when all those scary sections are going to come on. Angela's speech becomes more confident as she starts to get acquainted with some of the firemen. I almost thought that the building that was quarantined was actually the fire station! Because all the light-hearted moments, the audience is keen to keep a lookout, or I would say on an alert to spot if there's anything going amiss in the fire station. So, deep in the night, the firestation gets a call from one of the apartments and Angela plus her cameraman followed two firemen to their destination to film about their line of work. Ok, now THAT apartment is the one is getting quarantined..haha.

The moment they entered the apartment, the policeman stationed there already got freaking irritated by the cameraman..hahaha. And that would not be the last time he got ticked off by the characters. Some biohazard guy also got pissed with him. Awwww..come on..give the cameraman some love! =p They went up to check out this hysterical-looking zombie-ish old woman that was supposed to be receiving medical attention. Then out of a sudden, she turn into raging frenzy and started mauling one of the policemen. From that period onward, it gets freaky. When they wanna rush the injured policeman to the hospital, they realised that the whole building is on lockdown by the government and nothing goes out of the building. They tried out all the available places and even considering jumping down the second floor but the SWATs were quick to spot it and literally sealed the windows. Given that they would snipe anyone coming out of the building, I give all the people in the apartment a 0% chance of survival.

One by one the folks in the apartment got infected and soon there was no safe refuge to stay even at the lobby. All hell broke loose when it was revealed that the little girl being carried around by the mother was actually infected. Oh gosh, those zombies reminded me of those in 28 days later, where they are quick and they rush at you unlike those passive ones in Resident Evil. When the cameraman starts fleeing, the audience could get the feeling of it following the bumpy camera motion. At one point, the cameraman actually used his camera lens to smash the zombie head that was charging at him and the lens was splattered with all the blood and gore. He looked shell-shocked as he cleaned the bloody mess from his lens. Lol, that's what I call a killer cam =P. Btw, there's no guns available except for the two shots fired by the policeman. The other survivors could only use melee weapon to whack those zombies away, which is pretty shitty considering all the shotguns that Alice could use in Resident Evil. That makes the apartment folks' chances beyond negative 0% of survival.

As the survivors and the cameraman got restricted to one small room after another, there's a rising feeling of claustrophobia. The emotions and panic there are raw and you can hear all the heavy breathing. It felt as if the walls are squeezing on them as they get cornered. Angela herself had a nervous breakdown and she is getting extreme paranoia. And the final scene in the attic was creepy. The only source of light from the camera was smashed by some zombie kid and the cameraman had to use a nightvision. Then apparently, they were not safe there coz they got holed up together with a zombie man. At first, they tried to be quiet but a tint of noise causes it to rampage up against the cameraman and yes..he got pawned and dropped the camera. The camera just continued recording the gory end of our dear cameraman who had lovingly held his device to film the footage all this while. When Angela tried to get the camera, she was dragged into the darkness screaming. So, eventually, everyone got pawned and owned pretty badly.

Quarantine's storyline may not be extensive and it looked to be more of a prologue of a bigger movie but it does offer its own unique experience. The action is very intense there coupled with the shaky camerawork style. Of course, those techniques had already being replicated in other movies like Cloverfield, but this was the first time I've experienced that film style in Quarantine so I find it quite amazing. Another thing to note is that from the start to the finish, there's ZERO music accompanying the movie. It's just creepy silence, screams and surrounding noises that populates the audio. There's no whatsoever music to heighten the tension. The sound is just as natural as it is to its surroundings. It makes the audience feel as if they are at the place itself. Now, for me that's a kinda creative way to approach the genre. A movie without music. Interesting...

Hmm..I did a little check out on the cost of the movie production for Quarantine and I predicted it could be cheaper than 28 days later because they only used 1 camera with very little locations around and zero music. 28 days later was amazingly done with only a budget of 5 million pounds considering the scale that was being covered in that movie. Surprisingly, Quarantine's production cost came to $13 million (for a one camera show..haha). The extras probably got alot of bonus..hahaha. Yup, if you have the time to spare, it's quite a cool movie to catch if u feel like tapping onto some raw action and adrenaline. Now now, I just had a very strong urge to play Left 4 Dead..lol =p