IMAGINE The Blair Witch Projector Cloverfieldshot almost entirely indoors and you will get the essence of Quarantine. Or you may have seen the spoilers-filled trailer, which pointlessly gives away key elements of the new film. You will know exactly what to expect if you caught [ REC], the spooky 2007 Spanish horror movie which was passed over for Irish cinema release.
Relocating that tale to Los Angeles, Quarantine follows[ REC] closely in plotting and structure. It begins as reporter Angela (Jennifer Carpenter) and cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) are working on a routine reality TV project and assigned to cover the night shift at an LA fire station.
When the firemen are alerted to screams from an apartment in a downtown building, Angela and Scott travel with them. They find a blood-splattered elderly woman who seems terrified and then fights back, biting a policeman.
Attempting to take the officer to hospital, they discover that all the exits have been sealed and that all communication with the outside world has been cut off. Panic and paranoia inevitably ensue, and antagonism builds as everybody inside the building desperately struggles for individual self-preservation.
We rarely see Scott because the drama is shot from his camera's point of view. That prompts a witty, knowing reference when , in a brief moment of light relief, Angela is interviewing a child and her mother interrupts off-camera, only to be told how confusing that can be for the viewer.
The grim consequences put the disparate characters - and the viewer - through the mill in a lean, tight production that proves much more compelling than this week's other quarantine drama, Blindness. Director John Erick Dowdle makes thoroughly unsettling use of sound in building and sustaining a menacing atmosphere, and he and his crew prove commendably resourceful within the strict limitations of the movie's dark, confined setting.
Be prepared for some gruesome imagery - gore, vomit, rat killing - and to duck under your seat for the scene in which a drill is produced.
Directed by John Erick Dowdle. Starring Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short 18 cert, gen release, 89 min
