This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the movie. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited movie would be more negative

Quarantine is one of those films that I remember hearing about all the time. It could never escape the shadow of the original Rec film and yet I almost feel like it paradoxically got bigger because of this. The first thing anybody will tell you is that it’s based off of Rec and yet Quarantine is mentioned more often. I dunno it’s an interesting tidbit but either way the film is no good. I could have told you that right from the start but after watching it, I can confirm that it gets a thumbs down all the way.

The movie starts with Angela filming a segment for the news channel that she works at. She will be tailing some firefighters for a day to see what their work is like. There is a lot of banter as they wait for something to happen and finally there is a call. Someone has started acting crazy in a residential building so the firefighters and police go in with the news crew. Unfortunately the situation is worse than expected. They are all locked inside the building with the tenants and they begin to realize that zombies are present. A single bite will spread the virus and with no way out, this will be a difficult situation to survive.

First off I have to say that these are some of the dumbest horror characters I’ve ever seen. Now it is already a tried and true staple that horror protagonists never make the right decisions but these guys take it to a whole new level. The zombie virus isn’t exactly subtle here. Characters will suddenly be bleeding and acting all shaky. They’re frothing at the mouth and the main characters are still wondering what is going on. It’s bad enough near the beginning of the film where the characters are slowly approaching an insane person but by the middle act of the film they should be retaining some survival instincts.

At one point near the end of the film they know with 99% certainty that one character is a zombie but one guy still reaches out telling her to grab his hand. All of the sequences felt extremely forced. They even call in the professionals at one point and these guys presumably have some idea of what’s going on. Yet, they walk real close to one of the zombies and end up paying the price. The kills are all far too violent to find funny but there is definitely something darkly humorous about how some of these characters die. The deaths were 100% completely avoidable which is what will really annoy you there.

Now like I said, the situation is still difficult. I’m not saying that this is a cake walk but there are better ways to handle this. Keep in mind that the zombies are not bullet proof. Additionally it does seem to be possible to put them down for good with enough force. The zombies never get up again once they’ve actually been taken down. They are fast but can’t think so one of the firefighters is able to beat around 6-8 of them by himself. Keep in mind that this is a small building so the amount of zombies will likely max out at around 20.

Taking the offensive would be a good idea or barricading yourself in a room and forcing them to approach one at a time. Ironically the only character to think of this is the local “jerk” that everyone gets mad at. He said from the start that gathering everyone together didn’t make sense and he was right. That just makes it harder to dodge when a zombie is around and no matter what kind of flu they originally thought this was, packing everyone together is not a good idea.

Now you may wonder why they don’t just leave the building and ignore the government. Well, this government is taking a rather strong approach so they are straight up shooting everyone that tries to leave. So yeah leaving is not really an option this time. You can still find ways to survive but there is no guarantee that you are ever leaving this place alive.

Usually in these films they try to find some kind of audio device for exposition or a bunch of notes. The movie does this but in a very half hearted way so I’m not sure why they bothered. Angela and the others find a lab room from the guy who caused this problem and he left an audio but it was basically silent with a bunch of mumbling. Not the most helpful tool around.

Speaking of helpful, it goes without saying but none of the characters were very helpful here at all. First up you have Angela who is completely out of her depth here. She yells a whole lot which keeps giving away their position to the zombies and spends the entire climax panicking. It was pretty obvious at one point that shooting the zombies was the right move but Angela is still acting shocked as if this was excessive force.

I was just not a big fan of hers by the end. She started out okay but all the screaming is just rough when you have lives at stake. Those yells put everyone in danger and there has to be a point where the adrenaline takes over and you stop panicking. Everyone else was able to get with the program and Angela’s a professional in a line of work that sees a lot of violence. I would have expected her to do better. Instead the cameraman has to really take the initiative and do all of the hard work.

Even by the end of the film it felt like the characters had a chance of surviving. There weren’t many zombies left at all but Angela freezes up and decides not to help so that just messes everyone over. I’m not blaming her for the entire mess, other characters made similar mistakes. The cop with the gun should not have been defeated so naturally he puts the gun down and approaches a zombie. The writers had to work extra hard to find ways for the humans to lose here.

What the film does well is to maintain a very tense atmosphere. The film is really intense and the scares work pretty well. It just can’t help but try to be as gritty as possible in the process. You have all of the usual biting and characters being eaten but then you also have a rat being squashed with rather gruesome detail. That did not add anything to the film and could have definitely been removed. The film wanted to show that animals were also running around with the virus but we definitely didn’t need that.

It’s not like the film would have been much better off even without the animal part but still it’s worth noting. Even better characters would not have been enough to get the film into the green. It’s just not a pleasant film and instead focuses on making everyone as miserable as possible. The concept of the plot is more interesting than the execution so other films like this would still have potential.

Overall, This film could have done well to tone down the violence a whole lot and to go with a more traditional camera style. Stuffing everyone inside of a building with a horror threat is a great concept but then you have to let the writing and atmosphere tell the story from there. I’d also be interested in more of a large scale story about what the government are doing but I suppose by then it is basically just Resident Evil. If you want a zombie story I’d actually sooner recommend that one and that’s saying something.

Overall 1/10