Quarantine

Found footage movies are nothing new. The buzz behind The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield has given way to two or three such movies every year, mostly of the horror genre. Its conventions best utilize the first person camera narratives. With more of these movies, the quality has begun to even out. For every success, there's a dip. Most recently, Apollo 18 came and went. Quarantine ended up right about the middle of the newly found spectrum. For a real time movie, it spends an unusual amount of time developing its characters. That doesn't keep the filmmakers from throwing the same characters to the lions without blinking. Yes, this is a horror film through and through. It's a bloody, scary movie with the obvious trajectory towards a bloody, scary end. It's a B-movie made with the A-list in mind. The ensemble play their parts well. No one phones it in. There's not much to what they have to do, but I thought they did it exceptionally well. The whole movie is a bit ridiculous, but the filmmakers and performers play it straight. The audience benefits. A major scare, but a minor movie. I wonder how a staged performance would play out...

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