Quarantine

Director: John Erick Dowdle John Erick Dowdle

Overview

Jay Hernandez, Jennifer Carpenter, and Johnathon Schaech star in this remake of Jaume Balaguer? and Paco Plaza's successful, Spanish-language horror film [REC], which follows a television reporter and her cameraman as they fall under a mysterious quarantine issued on an inner-city apartment building. Television reporter Angela Vidal (Carpenter) and her trusty cameraman (Steve Harris) were documenting a night in the life of a Los Angeles fire station crew when the firefighters were summoned to a nearby apartment building to answer a routine 911 call. Upon arriving at the scene, Angela and company discover that police have already arrived to investigate the blood-curdling screams ringing out from one of the apartments. One of the women living in the building has been infected with something terrible, but what? When a few of the other residents are viciously attacked, they try to escape and discover that the CDC has quarantined the building. The officials in charge won't relay any information to those trapped inside the building, and it's impossible to seek information from the outside since telephone, Internet, television, and cell-phone access have all been cut off. By the time the quarantine is lifted, the intrepid cameraman's chilling footage provides the only evidence of the horrors that unfolded on that terrible night.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/17/2009
UPC:	0043396253674
Original Release:	2008
Rating:	R
Source:	SONY PICTURES
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, Dolby Digital Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:29:00
Sales rank:	37,589

Special Features

Closed Caption; "Locked In: The Making of Quarantine"; "Anatomy of a Stunt" featurette; "Dressing the Infected: Robert Hall's Make-up Design"; Commentary with writer/director John Erick Dowdle and writer/producer Drew Dowdle

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jennifer Carpenter	Angela Vidal
Steve Harris	Scott Percival
Jay Hernandez	Jake
Johnathon Schaech	George Fletcher
Columbus Short	Danny Wilensky
Andrew Fiscella	James McCreedy
Rade Serbedzija	Yuri Ivanov
Greg Germann	Lawrence
Jermaine Jackson	Nadif
Bernard White	Bernard
Dania Ramirez	Sadie
Elaine Kagan	Wanda Marimon
Marin Hinkle	Kathy
Joey King	Briana
Sharon Ferguson	Jwahir
Denis O'Hare	Randy
Stacy Chbosky	Elise Jackson
Jeannie Epper	Ms. Espinoza
Barry Sigismondi	Bob Orton
Ace Hatem	Wounded Woman
Christian Svensson	Armed Guard
Scott Donovan	Armed Guard
Michael Potter	Chief of Police
Jane Park Smith	News Reporter
Craig Susser	Hazmat Guard
Bert Jernigan	Hazmat Guard
Doug Jones	Thin Infected Man
John Meier	Repelling Guard
Troy Gilbert	Rebelling Guard
Shawn Driscoll	Firefighter
Bryan Ross	Firefighter
Robert Hall	Puppeteer
Mike Hyland	Video Guy
Ben Messmer	Griffin

Technical Credits

John Erick Dowdle

Jaume Balagueró

John Erick Dowdle	Director,Screenwriter,Screenwriter,Executive Producer,Producer
Doug Davison	Producer
Roy Lee	Producer
Sergio Aguero	Producer
Glenn S. Gainor	Executive Producer
Julio Fernández	Executive Producer,Executive Producer
Jaume Balagueró	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Intense handheld zombie frights are in store for viewers daring to take the leap into Quarantine, the American remake of Spain's heralded first-person chiller [REC]. Unfolding in near real time, the pic aims to put the audience into the action of an emergency response call gone horribly wrong. Claustrophobic, jittery at times, and electric in pace, Quarantine is a stripped-down bloody thrill ride that -- while certainly not catering to everyone's tastes -- should satisfy gore-hounds looking to step up their theatrical horror cuisine beyond the usual creepy little kid rehashes. That's not to say that the shocking flick is altogether a home run. Fans of its forefather will be a bit perplexed that some of the best parts of the ending were not carried over to this near shot-for-shot redo. Where the original took the tale into a whole new creepy arena in its final moments, the remake's filmmaking team of brothers Drew and John E. Dowdle (the duo behind the similarly shot Poughkeepsie Tapes) seem more interested in keeping true to the switch-up of shooting style, rather than also injecting the plot with an added layer of disturbance. New viewers should still find the proceedings to be frightful, even if they are missing a big key as to why the predecessor has stayed ingrained in so many viewers' brains. As it is, the new production is a gruesome exercise in frantic pacing that hardly lets up throughout its 90-minute running time. Behind the scenes, the production impresses with its long takes and well-choreographed (if not a bit hard to discern) set pieces. The cast does what it can with the material, with Jennifer Carpenter turning up the hysteria when needed and Johnathon Schaech (complete with a bushy 'stache) adding macho heft to the production. All things considered, the picture doesn't do nearly the damage that other remakes have wrought. What story the film has is still a bleak one -- it's just a matter of whether the right people looking for this kind of frenzied experience will find it or not. Even more of a question to ask is why the American production yearned so much to adhere to scene-by-scene reenactments, only to wimp out when it came to the well-regarded finale? Then again, this is the same studio that decided to give away many of the twists and turns in all of the movie's advertising, so maybe audiences should take what they get and at least be thankful for that.