31 Days of Halloween: Quarantine

2008,  John Erick Dowdle (Devil) -- Netflix

This movie is a remake of the 2007 Spanish movie Rec by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, who also directed the sequel [Rec]². This movie is of the tradition of faithfully remaking a movie exactly as the first, but for American audiences, and set in the US.

I rewatched this as a filler for this year's "31 Days of Halloween" as there are always a few days we miss due to ... life. I am also tempted to rewatch the original, just because.

Found Footage movies usually have the conceit that we know everyone is dead. The footage is supposed to be recovered after they all die, or disappear. In this case, the "everyone is dead" comes preposed because the trailers had the final scene of the movie -- main character Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter) being dragged off into the darkness by an unknown assailant. 

The movie begins with her footage of the San Francisco firehall. She is one of those fluff reporters building a repertoire of feel-good stories, and this one is a ride-along with a local fire station. There is some lively banter, some flirting between her and a couple of handsome firefighters Fletcher (Jonathan Schaech, Takers) and Jake (Jay Hernandez, Magnum PI), and then the call comes. They tell her that most of their calls are paramedic in nature, and most of the firefighters are trained in medical first response. An elderly lady in an old apartment building has been making a godawful din and they have called police & paramedics. A bunch of tenants have been wakened, including the super. When the cops investigate, the aggressive old lady pounces on one of the cops and tears out his throat. Everyone panics, carrying the bleeding cop to the lobby floor. Not long after, Fletcher the firefighter comes plummeting from above, crashing into the lobby floor in a bloody, broken mess. When they try to exit the building to the waiting ambulance, they are halted by men with guns and the doors are locked. 

Remember, the entire introduction is via the camera man's viewpoint, and Angela's constant coaxing to get it all on camera. At this point, she isn't panicking, but everyone around her is. Full on chaotic panic from first responders & residents with only Jake doing his best to keep a level head. The super points out that there is an overhang with window access from his office, and maybe someone could escape from there, but before they can, spotlights and armed forces and a big plastic tarp is dropped. The are being sealed in, entirely. Soon power and phone are cut. They are trapped inside with whatever is going on. The old lady has been shot, as she has killed her housekeeper. The panic ramps up.

Some details are eked out as the movie progresses. One of the residents had a sick dog, and her husband brought it to the vet. Their daughter has a fever. Another resident shows signs of illness, frothing at the mouth. The injured cop and firefighter and both salivating really bad. A vet who lives in the building comments on that being signs of rabies, but rabies takes month to progress to that state, and by that time it is fatal. The CDC sends in bunny suited specialists to test Fletcher and the cop, but that doesn't end well. Yep, zombies or Infected, but aggressive and killers.

The movie is very very effective in keeping the tension high, like on the edge of a knife high. There are lots of people screaming at each other, emotions are ratcheted up to 11 and normally this just bugs me, but here it feels appropriate. Soon, the movie escalates from a group of people trying to figure out how to escape the building, to just fleeing and hiding, until its only Jake and Angela and Scott, the camera man. They flee to the penthouse apartment, rented by a man not seen in months. His is not an apartment, more a chaotic mess of a lab, an Angela cannot help herself but rifle through the notes, giving us hints of this man investigating some sort of ancient tribal virus, something horrific and violent. The movie ends with the camera light breaking, Scott is down, the nightvision filter is on and Angela is doing her best to hide from a gaunt creature that must be the tenant. And then, like he poster, she is dragged screaming off into the dark.

Being a faithful remake of the original, I do like this movie, but again recall liking the original better, but likely only due to it being my first exposure to the story, and my enjoyment of another country's vision of an infected zombie apocalypse emerging. The found footage nature is mostly effective, if not entirely realistic. At some point, someone would have just said "fuck this" and tosses the bulky camera, screwing the record of events.