Stale Popcorn

UK EXCLUSIVE [Movie Review] QUARANTINE

I’ve taken more pot shots at Moriarty over at AICN and the website he represents then I have taken drags from a cigarette (and I love my cigarettes!) but the ‘enjoyment’ (if you can call it that) in doing so has been taken away in the last few months by the fact that Moriarty (aka Drew McSweeny) has slowly started to evolve into both a writer and a person that I admire and have a lot of time for. “Seriously?” one of you will ask. “But how?” another of you will hopefully follow up with.

Well… it started with his reaction to finding out about LucasFilms “embargo” to AICN’s reviews of The Clone Wars, which I thought was an incredibly intelligent, tolerant and well-judged piece that he had clearly taken time to process inwardly before putting out onto the world-wide-web. Some might say its incredibly “brave” of him to openly refuse to write about Star Wars when there’s little to no more Star Wars to write about anyway. I say you have to look at the bigger implications of what he was doing; he was calling LucasFilm to task and, in some regards, he was setting himself up inevitably as the David going up against Goliath. Then, most recently and most pertitently to this review (there is a point, I assure you!) Moriarty has spoken out about the pointlessness of remaking a flawless film (in his case, Let The Right One In) just because it is ”foreign” and he did this in spite of the fact that the attached remake director is ‘flavour of the moment’ (and fan of AICN) Cloverfield director, Matt Reeves.

Moriarty has, in recent months, started to talk about films and film-related topics that interest me, and is writing in away that reflects my opinion perfectly. Whilst my all time favourite critic, Roger Ebert, starts to descend into the madness of publishing reviews of films he has only seen eight minutes of, Moriarty has surprisingly come out of nowhere to put aside the self-publicising and the aint-my-life-great tangents to become a really interesting journalist in the field of all things cinema.

I open on such a ridiculously excessive tangent (oh the hypocrisy!) because Moriarty’s views on all things remake/remake related regarding his love of Let The Right One In are a complete, exact reflection of my views regarding the same subject matter and that of the movie [• REC] which, as of the time of writing, will undoubtedly be within the top ten of my end of year Top 25 list. My review of it can be found by clicking here. It really is the best horror film of the year in my opinion.

To remake it feels like such a pointless endevour to me. To do so on a film so recent and so flawless and so well received by all those who encountered it (the notoriously hard-to-please ‘Jimm’ holds it particularly high regard too!) seems to be only on the grounds that it’s “foreign” and comes with “subtitles” so they need to make it more “palatable” for American audiences by getting some US TV star to take the lead and to take out all the subtlety and such like.

[• REC] has a “camcorder-the-consequences” concept (not unlike Diary of the Dead, Cloverfield or The Blair Witch Project) that lends itself to some unique thrills and scares; so much so that in a movie of such a short running time (just over an hour and ten minutes) it is chockful of highlights and scenes you can’t wait to tell your friends about. It kind of forces anyone even so much as considering remaking it to consider only one of two routes:

(1) to just take the concept (a fake documentary about a virus outbreak in a housing complex that turns everyone into zombies) and bastardise it to fit your own needs with varying degrees of success a la Death Race, I Am Legend, Halloween and The Fog

(2) realise that you don’t want to be responsible for leaving out any of the bits of the original cherished by one and all, so stick - rather pointlessly – for an all but scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot re-tread of the original material e.g. Gus Van Sant’s Psycho or William Friedkin’s Twelve Angry Men.

Those involved with Quarantine, the US remake of [• REC] have opted for the latter. And so faithful to the source material is Quarantine that if you’ve never seen [• REC] then this movie could be one of the most effective horror films you’ll see this year. However, all that is good about this film is lifted wholesale from its source material. There’s a few neat, admirable touches (the government keeping those inside the building quarantined, are a little more “hands-on” by way of a sniper-rifle) and a bit more finessing of the finale (the Vatican-controlled conspiracy suggested at the climax of the original is kind of turned into something a little more “reasonable”) with this remake, but by and large you cannot hate nor love it because it sticks itself so damn closely to [• REC]

Performances, led by Jennifer Carpenter (from TV’s Dexter), are reasonable and do what is required but there’s no distinctly memorable performance and nothing worth shouting about. The direction by John Eric Dowdle is solid but, again, you cannot really compliment him too highly because he is essentially re-shooting work already carried out by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza first time round.

If you loved [• REC] then you’re not going to hate this because it is just too damn safe, and committed, to the original film it is remaking. You’ll just feel as if you’ll have seen this all before, which you will have done of course, and therefore question the point of it. And that’s exactly how I feel about Quarantine – that it’s just a pointless waste of film. A far superior template already exists and those involved with the US remake seem so scared to mess with it (some what thankfully) that they literally just reshoot the entirity of the original movie.

A “safe” version of a truly great genre film!

Here is where the frustrating confines of the Stale Popcorn rating system comes into play. Do I rate this for those who have never seen the original, or for those that have? Because, believe me, there is a difference. This film will work completely different depending on such matters. I guess all I can do is rate it somewhere in the middle of where it would be for each defined viewer. For those that have never seen the original source material I’d say this was a four “popcorn” experience, and for those that have I’d go with two/two-and-a-half/three at an absolute push. So let’s go with a sort of middle-ground and leave it at that:

… But I’d much prefer it if you’d all just ignore the fact that this exists and go check out [• REC] instead!

Popcorn Ratings Explained

Posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 4:00 pm under Movie Reviews (Theatrical) by Gazz.
Tags:Theatrical Reviews

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7 Responses to “UK EXCLUSIVE [Movie Review] QUARANTINE”

Grundy Said on October 29th, 2008 at 9:17 pm 1

I’m waiting to be able to see the original first.

I also agree that McWeeny has become a better writer. His episode of Fear Itself that was directed by Larry Fessenden and starring Doug Jones, was pretty great. Way better than either of his Carpenter Masters of Horror episodes, but after Pro-Life you can’t really get any worse (for **** sake not even Ron Perlman could save that episode).