16 September 2016

REC/QUARANTINE: TWO GORE-SOAKED HORROR FILMS REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.



REC/QUARANTINE: A DOUBLE DOSE OF 'FOUND FOOTAGE' HORROR FILM REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

REC. (2007) DIRECTED BY JAUME BALAGUERO AND PACO PLAZA. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY PABLO ROSSO. STARRING MANUELA VELASCO AND PABLO ROSSO.

QUARANTINE. (2008) BASED ON THE MOVIE 'REC' BY JAUME BALAGUERO AND PACO PLAZA. DIRECTED BY JOHN ERICK DOWDLE. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY KEN SENG.
STARRING JENNIFER CARPENTER, STEVE HARRIS AND JAY HERNANDEZ.

I've been watching rather a lot of these 'found-footage-filmed-in-night-vision' horror movies lately, to the point where if I accidentally caught a glimpse of something filmed in regular daytime vision on a camera that wasn't shaking all over the place like a flippin' Riverdancer, I'd probably be all like: 'Whoa man, wtf...?,' haha.

Still, it's all in a good cause, which is to further my horror education so that I can write knowledgeably about scary stuff for you guys, my loyal reader. Did I say 'reader,' singular? It seems I did. Of course, I meant 'readers,' plural. Obviously, I have more than one.

I forgot that there's that other guy from Cork as well, the one who reads my reviews to take his mind off his ringworm and the fact that his wife is having it away with Harry the temporary postman, the guy who stepped up when the regular guy got his foot caught in a manhole. I wonder how he's doing, the poor guy? There was talk of him losing that foot for a while, you know.

Anyway, as you horror movie smarties probably know already, QUARANTINE is the remake of REC, the hugely popular Spanish horror film from 2007. Critics were falling over themselves in an attempt to say good things about REC, but to be honest I found the almost scene-for-scene remake, QUARANTINE, to be pretty much as good as the brilliant original.

The plot is almost identical for both films, so we'll look at it from a 'joint' point of view rather than be nit-picky and go through both plots separately. Both films are based in identical-looking apartment blocks, really nice apartments with loads of nice spacious rooms, the kind you wouldn't mind living in yourself if there wasn't a load of horrible crazy stuff going on in them.

In both films, a beautiful and vivacious young TV presenter called Angela Vidal is 'shadowing' the local Fire Department with her trusty cameraman for the night, in an attempt to show the viewers what these brave strapping lads get up to while the general public is sound asleep in their beds. Jake in the remake is particularly sexy and gorgeous. He can access my 'pole hole' anytime, snigger.

An over-excited Angela, probably thrilled skinny at being perved on by the handsome firemen, is just dying for a major incident to occur during the night-shift to boost the show's ratings. Boy, does she ever get her wish...! 

After multiple jokes about 'firemens' hoses' and the infamous 'pole hole,' the lads are called out to an apartment building where an old lady has been heard screaming blue murder from inside her flat.

No-one, not one of the characters in either film, could have imagined the horror that awaits them when they reach their destination. The old lady, when they eventually break down her locked door, is covered in blood and foaming at the mouth. Some of the other residents don't look so hot either...

What exactly is going on in this building? Well, I can't tell you that as such but I can tell you that when a bunch of big-shot government types known as the CDC (I can't tell you what that stands for, it's a spoiler!) seal off the entire building because of the threat of something called a BNC (again, spoiler!), the sh*t really hits the fan.

Normal healthy people are effectively locked into the building with a load of sick and extremely dangerous, practically rabid people, heh-heh-heh. I just sneaked a spoiler into that sentence there
and you didn't even notice, tee-hee.

Can the normals find a way to save themselves before the cannibalistic mutants tear them to shreds, and will Angela's footage make her the television presenting star she's no doubt always wanted to be, or will the TV station end up writing her obituary? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind...

The shaky-cam is very shaky indeed here, so much so that you've got to be quick to keep up. There are high levels of gore and bloody disgusting-ness in both films, but probably a little more so in the remake. REC in particular was praised for the claustrophobic nature of its camera-work that helps to ramp up the fear and tension a million percent as the movie progresses.

I love the interaction of the neighbours in both films, especially in QUARANTINE. They all do a great job of showing the right level of panic and terror for such a gruesome situation. Both the Angelas are also brilliant at showing mounting terror. Though many of the scenes are vomit-inducingly horrible, I feel particularly sorry for the man trapped in the lift with the deranged dog. His fate is just awful.

That whole thing of being sealed up somewhere by orders of the 'gummint' so that the infection or whatever it is you've got doesn't spread to the general population taps into a very real fear that people have. It happened in that brilliant horror movie RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR and they did it in THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (2007) as well, with the dome sealing in the town and everything inside it because Springfield was so polluted thanks to Homer Simpson and his silo of pig-poop. (Spider-pig...!)

Let's face it, folks, if the 'gummint' thinks that you're a risk to national health and safety and/or security, you are going down. All the way down. Imagine if the last thing you were ever destined to see was one of those faceless guys in those white protective hazard-suit things walling you up inside your home. Imagine if the last voice you ever heard was a disembodied one talking into a megaphone ordering you as follows:
 
'Do not attempt to leave your home. I repeat, do NOT attempt to leave your home. If you attempt to leave your home, you will be terminated. Do not attempt to leave your home...'

And so on and so forth. I think that's one of the main factors that contributes to both these excellent horror films being so downright scary. It scares me even more than the face-eating. It probably won't happen, but it could. It really, truly could...

    AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

 You can contact Sandra at:


http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com







  

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