quarantine [2008]

going to the drive-in movies saturday night didn't pan out. for one thing, the weather turned down-right chilly with a strong, cold wind that subsided finally last night, whereby b. and i agreed that sitting outside and freezing our asses off just wasn't a palatable experience. instead, i took myself to the movies to see the newest hollywood remake of a european horror flick. quarantine is a redo of the spanish movie [rec] released last year. i've not seen the original so can't comment on it at all but the remake, tho it covers no new ground, was certainly an enjoyable halloween piece.

the set up is simple: a woman reporter and her camera-man shadow two firefighters on the nightshift in l.a. following a routine medical call the crew and the firefighters, including two police officers, and the occupants of an apartment building suddenly find themselves sequestered by the quickly gathering authorities outside. inside, fear and paranoia build as the reason why they are quarantined makes itself manifest in the increasing number of victims and bodies. the gimmick the filmmakers use is the p.o.v. of the camera-man as the horror enfolds.

it's a credible job and the principles are good in that oh shit, we're all dead sort of way. the use of a single hand-held camera to tell the story was once a revolutionary technique a decade ago but now is common enough to be un-spectacular by its use. like cgi, which was once the selling point of features [think jurassic park], now that the technology and techniques are commonly available for many, if not all, filmmakers, what is needed is, as always with any kind of movie, a good story. and i'm a sucker for stories that involve a small group of people stuck in desperate circumstances of life and death.

well, it was saturday night, and it was second saturday too, when midtown and downtown come alive every second saturday of the month with a huge arts and music fest so when i drove home i had to contend with the streets literally choked with people and venues bursting open. the theater was half-full of young people, i was i think the oldest one in the audience, and tho the movie itself wasn't so scary it did have its moments of shock. i found that fun because the audience jumped out of their seats and screamed. i forget that watching horror movies with a group of strangers can be such a cathartic experience. instead, i'm usually ensconced in my room watching these flicks alone. there is normally no one around to hear when i scream.

but for the movie, i'll have to check out the original to see how it matches up. a quick glance at youtube and i see that the remake and the original nearly mirror themselves. all to the good? i'm not sure. at any rate, the remake is a solid effort at a scare pic even if it wasn't so scary and the novelty of p.o.v. camera work isn't so novel. again the movie is not so scary as the trailer leads one to believe, except in one detail that is scant in both the teaser trailer and the full-length trailer. and it is this one detail that made the movie almost too hard for me to sit thru. that detail - SPOILER ALERT! - is the fact of one of the firefighters. he sported a monster of a bushy moustache. it had a life of its own and i won't be surprised to see that moustache as the creature in the sequal.