Friday I posted about the movie Saw, while waiting on a bench for my theatre to empty. I was waiting to see the movie Quarantine. All the trailers I had seen for it presented it as a horror/suspense movie about a building that is quarantined due to some outbreak happening inside, which the Government later covered up.

While I was at Hofstra University for the debates this past Wednesday, I was in the audience for the Brian Lehrer Show. One of the guests on the show was talking about his book, which focused on paranoia and conspiracies, and how the occurrence of both greatly increases in the U.S. as totalitarian in the U.S. increases. If this is true, I think its very possible that that’s what this film is catering to.

Quarantine ended up being an extremely strange movie. It was filmed similar to the Blair Witch Project, but in this case it was through the lens of a reporter and cameraman who were following around two firefighters. There’s a 10 minute introduction where they are just doing interviews around the firehouse. They then receive a call and go to the building where the main story begins.

They enter the building, go up a few flights of stairs, and slowly enter the apartment where the incident is occurring in. The apartment is dark (the entire building seems to be only dimly lit). Since it is filmed to appear as if the only surviving record is the cameraman’s video, the film is somewhat shaky.

Inside the apartment, there is a woman, in the dark, who isn’t speaking at all. She’s standing in the dark with her hands hanging at her side. After a few minutes of the police and firemen trying to talk to her, and her not responding, the woman lunges as one of them, biting one of their necks. They quickly leave the apartment, running downstairs.

By the time they get to the bottom floor, the front door is locked. As they try to leave, authorities on a megaphone tell them not to panic and that people will be in to let them out soon. All the doors are locked. Some windows are soon guarded by soldiers with machine guns and snipers. Inside, the characters are attacked one by one - by infected humans and dogs.

A veterinarian suspects that its some form of rabies. But he doesn’t understand how people are becoming infected so quickly or how it is making them so violent. He ominously adds that there is no cure for rabies: its 100% fatal once you are infected.

The police officer notifies them that the CDC is coming, and that everyone will be able to leave soon. Everyone in the building just needs to get a blood test to make sure they aren’t infected. The veterinarian doesn’t understand how this is possible. The only way to test for rabies is a brain sample.

Eventually agents from the CDC come. They are dressed in white hazmat suits. They go into the backroom where some of the infected victims are unconscious. They lock everyone else out while they do their tests. The reporter and camera man enter into the next room in order to look through a hole in the wall. They see the CDC agent drilling into one of the victims’ heads to get a brain sample.

Soon after one of the CDC agents tells the remaining characters that they followed the infection from a dog at a local veterinarian whose owner lived in their building. That is the only explanation the Government gives throughout the entire movie.

The film has zero conflict resolution. Everyone dies - everyone. You never find out what the disease / virus / bacteria is. The Government isn’t held responsible for locking everyone in the building, nor are you introduced to any Government agents at the end who explain what happened. Once the reporter, cameraman, and firefighters enter the building, they (and you watching on their camera), never leave. You are locked in by the Government with the infection inside.

The film reminded me a lot about the U.S. Government’s “war on terrorism”. You have an intangible enemy which is never seen, never explained, and never caught. You have a government which will do literally anything to supress the “threat” (all of which they are never held accountable for). You have a government which provides little, if any, explaination for their actions or what’s going on in the world. And while you have an intense distrust of authority, you are instead lead to a feelings of paranoia and helplessness.

It wasn’t a particularly good movie. It was a good for a few jumps and screams, though I wouldn’t recommend the movie, except if you really enjoy human suffering, or perhaps if you want to make the connections to what’s going on in our world.