Quarantine ***Spoiler Alert***

Don’t bother! It was awful…



It is about a journalist, named Angela, doing a piece on the local fire department, who has a night she had not at all anticipated. The first twenty minutes entail walking through the fire station getting to know the firemen and seeing how the live.

Guess what…nobody cares.

There’s a gratuitous shower scene (which would have been ok if the lathered fireman was at all attractive) to show the playful goings on, and, of course, a visit to a fire station would not be complete without the obligatory slide down the pole.

Then we wait..and wait…and wait… for a call to come in so that Angela and her camera man, Scott, can tag along and film “the action”. The whole movie is filmed in that pseudo documentary style which, I don’t mind it so much, if it’s done right, but this was, I imagine, what it would be like if you were having a seizure.

Finally the alarms start blaring, but only after some periodic announcements for which the actors brilliantly froze to listen to intently, adding to my own anticipation…clever, clever. Anyway, the firemen suit up (all two of them) and Angela and Scott hop into the back of the fire truck. Is that even allowed? They get to the building where the distress call came from and find a pair of cops along with just about the entire tenancy of the building in the front lobby.

Everyone is worried and confused. They heard growl like screams coming from some old lady’s apartment, and this, I assume, is what made all the tenants decide to assemble in the lobby. The firemen, the two cops and our loveable journalist with camera man in tow decide to go upstairs and check it out. They enter the apartment, which is conveniently unlocked, and there, at the end of the hallway, stands a sixty year old woman in a nightgown, sobbing, covered in blood and frothing at the mouth. As they approach she starts freaking out and, inevitably, takes a bite out of one of the cops.



Here’s where it gets interesting...

They take him downstairs, but one of the firemen stays upstairs to subdue a now docile old lady. When the others get downstairs with the partially eaten cop everybody flips out. One of the tenants says he’s a veterinarian and that he can help. As everyone hovers the fireman that was upstairs with the old lady comes tumbling over the railing a goes splat right on his head. Help is being radioed for and there is chaos. Finally they get everyone to calm down and get the cop burger and the pureed fireman to the back part of the building so the vet can care for them. Just as some of the people try to exit the building it is only then discovered that they have been sealed inside and that all radio, internet, cable and cell phone connections have been severed. Our small group of heroes go back upstairs 1) to discover the old lady is now missing (only to reappear later) and 2) to try and find another way out only to find that there are helicopters and snipers surrounding the building. There are other tenants in the building that are still in their apartments and for a little filler and suspense they go around trying to gather them all.

Spoiler:

They get back down to the lobby just in time to see the previously unconscious appetizers act, I don’t know, like they have rabies?



A little while later after the group is able to subdue them anew the vet says he believes this is some kind of mutant rabies that takes effect in hours rather than months blah, blah, blah a dog was in the office with a similar malady yadda, yadda, yadda. Turns out the dog belongs to one of the tenants and started spreading the infection somehow.

Needless to say, this goes on until everyone in the building but our Angela and Scott become infected. At some point the power goes out completely and the remainder of the movie is done in night vision. Keep in mind the only one who can see is Scott (and unfortunately, us) since he is the one holding the camera. He guides Angela through this tedious maze and they end up in a room that resembles a lab filled with caged rats. Then they enter another room off of that that has work tables and newspaper paper clippings of no consequence. They hear movement above them in a crawl space, Scott stands on a chair to check it out, there’s a cheap scare and he falls to the floor. Then they start shushing each other because they hear yet more noise from the far end of the room. Now, admittedly, though it isn’t genius, I found this the most enjoyable part of the movie. There are a couple of good moments, as they inch around, in the dark, with a humanoid that seems to have an advanced form of the infection. Scott makes a noise and gets pummeled with a hammer. There are a few more minutes of cat and mouse then this happens…



Kinda looks like the movie poster, huh? THAT'S CAUSE IT IS!

And that’s that. The best we can guess is that the creature upstairs was once a man doing rabies experiments on rats for some reason, a rat escaped, a dog killed it, caught the rabies and started spreading it. We don’t really know how the people on the outside knew it was there except for a fleeting comment on government experimentation about halfway or so through the movie. At least, that’s how I remember it.

P.S. This is the original, eerily similar Spanish version. I have not watched it and probably won't. Mostly because I don't have the energy to write a reveiw in Spanish.