This flick is one I've heard about for around a year now. People were raving up and down that this movie was sick and scary, but no one was giving anything away (which is rare in today's society where people feel the need to ruin each and every twist of every movie ever released). I had this movie on my "to watch list," but when I started seeing hype about the new movie "Quarantine" and learned that it was a remake of [REC], the movie became an immediate must see. After watching it, I realized some things.

First, I wish I could have seen this movie not knowing what was going to happen (the trailer for "Quarantine" gives away each and every plot twist of the movie, so no one is going to be surprised if they come into this experience having seen that trailer first). I had my doubts after the first twenty minutes or so that this movie would live up to its hype because it's so genius at looking unassuming and normal, so that when the shit hits the fan, you can truly be shocked by what happens. I mean, I knew what was going to happen and I was STILL cringing and gasping while I watched the film.

Second, even though there is a language barrier at work here (as the original [REC] is in Spanish and the currently available versions come with a set of rather dubious subtitles) good acting can make characters imminently relatable. Manuela Velasco, who plays the reporter Angela Vidal, is adorable, and her plight is frightening to watch. We see this poor woman slowly unravel as she gets deeper and deeper into a horrible situation with no foreseeable way out and the actress manages to be terrified without being shrill or annoying, which is a tough act to pull off. Everyone in the movie is totally engaged from start to finish, it doesn't appear that anyone is slacking off or just cashing a paycheck; the movie is full of believable performances from even minor characters, which is something I greatly appreciated. Third, I saw once again how limited special effects can be used to have a greater impact when they're applied in the right way.

The guy is a genius. I will watch anything he produces. I worship the quicksand he walks on. I'm walking a thin line here, not wanting to give away too much of the plot (although like I said earlier, if you watch television and you've seen even the TV spot for "Quarantine," you know way too much already). I will say this, though...anyone who told you that this was a zombie movie is wrong. Don't come in expecting reanimated corpses. You will be disappointed. Basically, a television crew is filming a reality TV show about firefighters, and they follow the firefighters on an emergency call to an apartment building where frightened neighbors complained that one of their elderly neighbors has been in her apartment screaming all night. The firefighters and some police who are on the scene go to check things out and they find the woman wandering around in her apartment, apparently delusional, and when they try to help her, she attacks them. Soon the residents of the apartment are in a panic.

The police and disease control have sealed off the exits to the apartment so the TV crew and the residents are trapped inside with no idea what is going on as things become more and more dangerous and it gets harder and harder to survive the onslaught of paranoia and hysteria. If I have one small complaint about this movie it is that the subtitles are a little hokey. I didn't understand what they were saying sometimes since they were translated badly, but other than that, this is a solid horror film with oppressive atmosphere, great acting, great effects, and a final scene that will creep you out long after the movie has ended.

So how does this most recent rehash hold up? Well, I'm surprised to say that it holds up pretty well. I expected it to be terrible, but it manages for most of its running time to be almost a carbon copy of the original, and anything it adds to the plot of the movie only helps the story along. Remakes are notorious for being far worse than their predecessors, but this one holds up nicely.

Moving the action to Los Angeles, actress Jennifer Carpenter takes over the role of reporter Angela Vidal. Carpenter is likable and for most of the film that likeability manages to carry her performance. We see more of the cameraman this time, and he is played compellingly by actor Steve Harris (another likable TV star) who does well with what he's given for this role. He's very reassuring and relatable in the way he tries to keep everyone from freaking out even when the situation inside the apartment building gets increasingly freaky. I admired his performance in this movie. Everyone else gives a capable performance too, though certain police and firemen who were much more likable in the original movie transform into unbelievable told here, and I think that has a lot to do with the message of the movie.

See, in [REC] the government is seen as pretty horrible, sealing these poor people in the apartment with a frightening and deadly situation going on, but in "Quarantine," the evil of the government rises exponentially. First of all, in the few seconds before the city turns off cable television and electricity for the apartment, we see a television report where an elected official is claiming that everyone has been evacuated from the apartment (talk about feeling screwed by the government). Second, the few members of the Center for Disease Control who do come in to examine the remaining apartment residents lie to everyone about what is going on and what the tests will entail. Let's just say the residents are lucky that all hell breaks loose before they get a chance to test everyone. There's constantly a sense that the government is trying to cover up what is happening to these people, and the trapped reporters say more than once that they have to record the events in order to record the truth of what happened. While the reporters say this in the original [REC], the sense that the government is lying is much more prevalent here, which reflects the US and our current mistrust of the government.

While [REC] leaves the source of what is turning the residents of the apartment into psychotic killers, "Quarantine" gives a much more mundane solution , which mostly works for the running time of the movie until it all falls apart at the end. Honestly, this isn't a bad movie, it just pales in comparison to the original, so any criticism of the elements of the movie is really just nitpicking, save for three things. First of all, I love Jennifer Carpenter, but in this movie, she falls apart. I know it's a scary situation, but remember, the actress in [REC] managed to be terrified without being shrill. Carpenter fails miserably at this. Her dialogue for the last twenty minutes of the movie consists of "WAAAAHHHH AAAHHH NNNAAAHHH" and it becomes so annoying we want to kill her ourselves. Poor Steve Harris is trying to save them both, and we feel for him trying to keep her calm while she's screaming and shaking the camera and pulling on him and basically doing everything she can to get them both killed. Second, the shaky camerawork that was present in [REC] is so much worse here that I almost threw up watching this movie. I'm not kidding you, at times the screen is so dark and swirling with images that it's going to make you feel hung-over when you leave the theater.

In [REC] the filmmakers craft an intriguing explanation for what is happening that deals with newspaper clippings and a tape recording found in one of the apartments. It all leads to one of the freakiest scenes I've witnessed in a horror movie in years, and it's seamlessly well done. Quarantine takes that same idea and throws it out the window, opting instead for Jennifer Carpenter screaming and whining while the camera swirls around some newspaper clippings where we literally can read about three words ("lab" and "chemical warfare"). So we're supposed to assume that chemical warfare caused all this to happen? The government is evil again, right? And then the characters find a tape recording all right, but the batteries on the tape recorder are going dead, so all they hear is a bunch of garbled sounds and no discernable words. So what the fuck was the purpose of putting that tape recording in the movie if they weren't going to be able to hear anything? These caveats make the final scenes of the movie make way less sense than those in [REC] and they ruin what was a cool and thought-provoking twist. Maybe the filmmakers think that scary images make up for a lack of substance, but I'm offended by that. This isn't the worst remake ever and it's not a bad little movie on its own, but why would I watch a dumbed-down version of events when I could watch the original and get much more of a cool story with my scary images?

"Quarantine" suffers from the "more is more" mentality of recent Hollywood films. If you've never seen [REC] you probably won't be bothered by the stupid things it does, but it irritated me because it could have been so much more. First it has an ad campaign that gives everything away, starting with the movie title. [REC] refers to the flashing words at the bottom of the camera indicating that it is recording, and it is a lovely little ambiguous title that leaves the viewer wondering what the movie is about. Naming the movie "Quarantine" is like naming "Rosemary's Baby" "Satan's Baby." It gives way too much away too soon, let alone the ad campaign that gives away every twist of the movie and a cop out explanation at the end of the movie that doesn't explain anything. These problems don't detract from the cool scary images that the movie has and the few things it adds that are actually thought provoking and interesting, but in the end, it's just a useless rehash that pales in comparison to the original. It could have been so much more, but I can't reward potential, so I have to warn you that if you want to see the story executed in a much better fashion, check out [REC] and skip this sequel.