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Quarantine: The other horror movie I saw during my lurgy-induced lounge in front of the DVD player, I watched Quarantine because Jennifer Carpenter annoys me and I wanted to watch her die. It's not a pretty motive, but it's the truth. If Debra Morgan on Dexter ever dies, I'm going to come in my pants like a nymphomaniac hooker on a KY overdose. She tries for bubbly effervescence and delivers moronic, bubble-headed goofiness and unbecoming, bratty petulance instead. So, no matter how dreadful the movie, I knew there would be a nugget of joy to salve my burning eyeballs.
Is it a bad movie? Eh. It's not brain-devouringly awful, like the eighty minutes of excruciating tedium that was Open Water, a movie so bad that I wanted to leave twenty minutes in, but was too embarrassed to ask Roomie if he'd mind eating the twenty dollars we'd paid for tickets. It wasn't good, either. It was just there, like room-temperature meatloaf. It treated adequately with the tropes of both survival horror and "found footage" horror, but it doesn't bring anything new to the table. So, unless you're like me and have a burning desire to see Jennifer Carpenter die, there is no reason to see this movie.
Quarantine does have something most horror flicks--and most movies in general, for that matter; have people always been such smarmy, self-indulgent pricks?--don't. and that is likeable zombie fodder. Maybe it's because they're older than the average monster meat, or maybe it's because we weren't subjected to thirty interminable minutes of them swilling cold ones and sparking up on a road trip while slagging their girlfriends and behaving like shaved marmosets. Angela and Scott, her erstwhile cameraman, do tour the local firehouse, but aside from a few lewd remarks from the firemen, people keep their asshats in the closet. Once things get rolling in the quarantined building, the tenants are about what you'd expect. There's the elderly foreign super and his wife, a thirty-something childless couple, a mother with her sick child, a single woman, a foreign couple who don't speak English and have a paralytic grandfather upstairs(and oh, boy, what fun times there must have been for him when the zombies started the apocalyptic didoes), and an old cat lady. And the hapless cop and firemen who were unlucky enough to draw the call to the building from hell. They're scared and angry, and a few of them make stupid, fatal choices, but no one is the cackling, designated asshole who suggests that they hurl the sick child from the window as a distraction and make a break for it. No one throws anyone to the rabid zombies to save themselves. That much is refreshing, and I was rooting for some of them to survive, especially Jake the firefighter, who tried to save anyone he could before succumbing to a blitzkrieg zombie attack in a stairwell.
What wasn't refreshing was the nasty, fetid boil of ableism that reared its pustulant head soon after the festivities have commenced. The policeman and firemen have rounded up the tenants and are taking a head count in the lobby. Someone mentions that the African couple are caring for their paralytic grandfather in an upstairs bedroom, and the firemen wonder if they should carry him down to the lobby, where he can be with the others.
"Don't bring him down here. Maybe he's the cause of all this. We don't need sick people with us," cries the mother with the child. It should be noted that no one protested when the firemen manhauled a young woman downstairs even though she was foaming at the mouth in what turned out to be the early stages of zombie rabies. It should also be noted that the mother says this while clutching a child with purported "bronchitis". She gets her comeuppance when the "bronchitis" morphs into zombie rabies and woobiekins chews her ear off. Apparently, as far as the mother was concerned, her child's is of no consequence, but the possible illness of a disabled foreigner is highly suspicious, and they should be shunned. For the greater good, of course. Never mind that it was her dog, incubated in her safe, white, suburban life, that was the vector for the accelerated rabies.
I can't fault the scene in terms of realism. I know that when in crisis, people tear off their civilized clothes and start shrieking like terrified howler monkeys. Our worst qualities are often exacerbated and on full display. Everyone goes Slytherin when the shit begins to fly. However, I can't but bristle whenever someone starts bellowing about those icky, burdensome cripples and how they don't matter as much as the healthy people who can better fend for themselves. I've sat in too many philosophy classes and been told that when push comes to shove, it's perfectly acceptable to leave me behind or shove me out of the boat or stave my head in with a rock so there will be more food for the others in a crisis because I couldn't contribute anything useful to the group anyway, and any how, it's not personal, just for the greater good not to get frothy whenever the sentiment appears in the culture at large.
If the zombies run amok, I don't expect others to sacrifice themselves for me, but I do want the same opportunity to survive as the least of the supposedly more valuable able bodies. If the morbidly obese, asthmatic, chain-smoking hebephile gets a lead pipe and a prayer, then I want one, too. It doesn't matter that my feeble efforts to ward off the zombies won't amount to a fart in a tin can. What matters is that I had the chance, however remote, to live. I don't want to be left stranded in my bed, a helpless zombie apertif, because the rest of the group didn't think I was worth saving. And wouldn't the joke be on them if they needed my l33t foreign-language fu to negotiate with the German zombie leader, only to discover too late that they'd deserted the one person who could have saved them, or at least given them a better chance? It isn't likely, I grant you, but it's possible, and I'm tired of value being assigned solely on the bases of physical perfection and earnings potential. I have value, and I like my life and cherish it as deeply as the ablest fashion model, and I'm tired of being asked to defend that position to the world at large by dint of an "acceptable" pay stub or the coveted intangible of inspiration.
I realize the scene was meant to illustrate xenophobia and the herd mentality that predominates in a crisis, but the skunky, jockstrap and gym sock whiff of ableism put my nose decidedly out of joint.
The "infecteds" are no great shakes; they look like the terminal hangover victims of Fat Tuesday, and the zombie concept was shamelessly ripped from 28 Days Later, right down to the red irises. There is a lot of tremulous camera work and incessant screaming, but aside from the final scene, wherein Angela and Scott take refuge in the attic, there is no sense of urgency or claustrophobic imminence. People just run and scream and run and scream and scream and die at the appointed time and leave not a jot of emotional resonance to accompany their blood splatter.
Well, most of them don't. Jake and Scott are notable exceptions, Jake because he remains a selfless firefighter to the end, and Scott because he stays with Angela long after I would have bludgeoned her to death to silence the ceaseless, mindless sobbing and screaming. I have a nobility kink, and I'll cheer for anyone who refuses to abandon their friends when the zombies come a-gnashin'.
I wouldn't waste money on Quarantine(And I didn't. I borrowed it from my mother), but if you're a zombie diehard, it might be worth a Netflix rental. C
Is it a bad movie? Eh. It's not brain-devouringly awful, like the eighty minutes of excruciating tedium that was Open Water, a movie so bad that I wanted to leave twenty minutes in, but was too embarrassed to ask Roomie if he'd mind eating the twenty dollars we'd paid for tickets. It wasn't good, either. It was just there, like room-temperature meatloaf. It treated adequately with the tropes of both survival horror and "found footage" horror, but it doesn't bring anything new to the table. So, unless you're like me and have a burning desire to see Jennifer Carpenter die, there is no reason to see this movie.
Quarantine does have something most horror flicks--and most movies in general, for that matter; have people always been such smarmy, self-indulgent pricks?--don't. and that is likeable zombie fodder. Maybe it's because they're older than the average monster meat, or maybe it's because we weren't subjected to thirty interminable minutes of them swilling cold ones and sparking up on a road trip while slagging their girlfriends and behaving like shaved marmosets. Angela and Scott, her erstwhile cameraman, do tour the local firehouse, but aside from a few lewd remarks from the firemen, people keep their asshats in the closet. Once things get rolling in the quarantined building, the tenants are about what you'd expect. There's the elderly foreign super and his wife, a thirty-something childless couple, a mother with her sick child, a single woman, a foreign couple who don't speak English and have a paralytic grandfather upstairs(and oh, boy, what fun times there must have been for him when the zombies started the apocalyptic didoes), and an old cat lady. And the hapless cop and firemen who were unlucky enough to draw the call to the building from hell. They're scared and angry, and a few of them make stupid, fatal choices, but no one is the cackling, designated asshole who suggests that they hurl the sick child from the window as a distraction and make a break for it. No one throws anyone to the rabid zombies to save themselves. That much is refreshing, and I was rooting for some of them to survive, especially Jake the firefighter, who tried to save anyone he could before succumbing to a blitzkrieg zombie attack in a stairwell.
What wasn't refreshing was the nasty, fetid boil of ableism that reared its pustulant head soon after the festivities have commenced. The policeman and firemen have rounded up the tenants and are taking a head count in the lobby. Someone mentions that the African couple are caring for their paralytic grandfather in an upstairs bedroom, and the firemen wonder if they should carry him down to the lobby, where he can be with the others.
"Don't bring him down here. Maybe he's the cause of all this. We don't need sick people with us," cries the mother with the child. It should be noted that no one protested when the firemen manhauled a young woman downstairs even though she was foaming at the mouth in what turned out to be the early stages of zombie rabies. It should also be noted that the mother says this while clutching a child with purported "bronchitis". She gets her comeuppance when the "bronchitis" morphs into zombie rabies and woobiekins chews her ear off. Apparently, as far as the mother was concerned, her child's is of no consequence, but the possible illness of a disabled foreigner is highly suspicious, and they should be shunned. For the greater good, of course. Never mind that it was her dog, incubated in her safe, white, suburban life, that was the vector for the accelerated rabies.
I can't fault the scene in terms of realism. I know that when in crisis, people tear off their civilized clothes and start shrieking like terrified howler monkeys. Our worst qualities are often exacerbated and on full display. Everyone goes Slytherin when the shit begins to fly. However, I can't but bristle whenever someone starts bellowing about those icky, burdensome cripples and how they don't matter as much as the healthy people who can better fend for themselves. I've sat in too many philosophy classes and been told that when push comes to shove, it's perfectly acceptable to leave me behind or shove me out of the boat or stave my head in with a rock so there will be more food for the others in a crisis because I couldn't contribute anything useful to the group anyway, and any how, it's not personal, just for the greater good not to get frothy whenever the sentiment appears in the culture at large.
If the zombies run amok, I don't expect others to sacrifice themselves for me, but I do want the same opportunity to survive as the least of the supposedly more valuable able bodies. If the morbidly obese, asthmatic, chain-smoking hebephile gets a lead pipe and a prayer, then I want one, too. It doesn't matter that my feeble efforts to ward off the zombies won't amount to a fart in a tin can. What matters is that I had the chance, however remote, to live. I don't want to be left stranded in my bed, a helpless zombie apertif, because the rest of the group didn't think I was worth saving. And wouldn't the joke be on them if they needed my l33t foreign-language fu to negotiate with the German zombie leader, only to discover too late that they'd deserted the one person who could have saved them, or at least given them a better chance? It isn't likely, I grant you, but it's possible, and I'm tired of value being assigned solely on the bases of physical perfection and earnings potential. I have value, and I like my life and cherish it as deeply as the ablest fashion model, and I'm tired of being asked to defend that position to the world at large by dint of an "acceptable" pay stub or the coveted intangible of inspiration.
I realize the scene was meant to illustrate xenophobia and the herd mentality that predominates in a crisis, but the skunky, jockstrap and gym sock whiff of ableism put my nose decidedly out of joint.
The "infecteds" are no great shakes; they look like the terminal hangover victims of Fat Tuesday, and the zombie concept was shamelessly ripped from 28 Days Later, right down to the red irises. There is a lot of tremulous camera work and incessant screaming, but aside from the final scene, wherein Angela and Scott take refuge in the attic, there is no sense of urgency or claustrophobic imminence. People just run and scream and run and scream and scream and die at the appointed time and leave not a jot of emotional resonance to accompany their blood splatter.
Well, most of them don't. Jake and Scott are notable exceptions, Jake because he remains a selfless firefighter to the end, and Scott because he stays with Angela long after I would have bludgeoned her to death to silence the ceaseless, mindless sobbing and screaming. I have a nobility kink, and I'll cheer for anyone who refuses to abandon their friends when the zombies come a-gnashin'.
I wouldn't waste money on Quarantine(And I didn't. I borrowed it from my mother), but if you're a zombie diehard, it might be worth a Netflix rental. C
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