(Inside a darkened apartment building, MICHAEL ARRUDA knocks on an apartment door. It opens, and MA enters the apartment.)

MA: Anyone here?

(L.L. SOARES is sitting in front of a television which is showing reruns of EMERGENCY!, and there are no other lights on inside the room. MA calls to him again, but he does not respond.)

MA: Are you okay?

(LS makes some strange growling noises, sounding a bit like the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil.)

MA: LL!

(LS jumps up and spits out a mouthful of popcorn.)

LS: What the hell? Don't you knock?

MA: Sorry. I did. I guess you didn't hear me.

LS: I must have dozed off.

(MA starts turning on all sorts of lights).

LS: What are you doing?

MA: Turning lights on. I can't see in here.

LS: Scared of the dark?

MA: No, I just like to see. (The light reveals popcorn kernels all over the floor). On second thought... (Turns some of the lights off again). Ready? Let's begin. Tonight, folks, L.L. and I are here in this darkened apartment building to review the new horror movie, QUARANTINE (2008).

QUARANTINE tells the story of Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) a television reporter who, along with her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris), takes on the assignment of covering a Los Angeles fire department for a night. On this particular night, the department responds to a routine call about someone being ill inside an apartment building, and Angela and Scott tag along for the ride. Arriving at the building, they find that the police are already at the scene, and the officers explain that a woman was screaming from inside one of the apartments.

They enter the apartment and find a frightened old woman who looks extremely pale and ill. Before they can remove her from the apartment, she attacks them and viciously bites one of the police officers. As they retreat down to the lobby, they discover that the front doors to the apartment building are locked from the outside. Along with the rest of the building's occupants, Angela, the police, and the firemen find themselves trapped inside the building, surrounded by lots of soldiers with guns.

Angela and the others quickly realize that they have been quarantined, and soon after they discover that the disease spreading inside the building is a deadly strain of rabies. The rabies spreads quickly, as the victims turn into murderous zombie-like creatures that attack and bite new victims. Angela and the others must fight to survive against these vicious creatures while at the same time seeking a way out of the building past the gun-toting officials outside.

Now, I liked QUARANTINE, but there were parts of this movie that I didn't like. I liked the idea of the movie. I thought the concept of the reporter covering a night at a fire station was a good one, and the whole part at the apartment building I really liked.

LS: I really liked how most of the action takes place in the old apartment building, too. It's a great location.

MA: I thought it was a creepy location, and ripe for some intense scares. Now I realize this is a remake of another movie, so I guess the writers can't claim credit for originality here.

LS: Yeah, QUARANTINE is a remake of a Spanish film called [REC] (as in what comes onscreen when you push the 'Record' button), and it's very faithful to the source material. Aside from trying to flesh things out a bit, the American version is almost a scene-for-scene remake.

MA: I thought the scenes at the fire station at the beginning of the movie were rather slow, and not as interesting or as entertaining, let's say, as the opening party scene in CLOVERFIELD (2008), to which QUARANTINE will inevitably be compared, thanks to its hand-held camera work and documentary feel. But this is a minor point, and not one that I hold against this movie.

LS: I didn't mind the scenes in the fire house. I thought they established a real sense of normalcy before things get really weird. I also really liked the way the movie starts off with no opening credits, jumping right into the story, and reinforcing the idea that everything we see is the work of a television news crew.

MA: Back to the apartment building, which I said was ripe for some intense scares. It was, and some of the scares were intense, but I have to say, I had a very difficult time seeing things in this movie. The combination of darkness and quick hectic camera work, for me, severely hampered the thrills and chills in this movie. I wanted to see what was going on, but I had a difficult time doing so, and I found this to be a major distraction.

LS: I didn't think it was a distraction at all. We see just enough in QUARANTINE to know what is going on, and enough to create some effective scares.

MA: I guess your eyes are better than mine.

LS: You're the guy wearing glasses. Maybe it's time for a new prescription.

MA: You think so? (removes two Coke bottles from his eyes.) (Replaces them with Pepsi bottles.)

LS: Hey, no product placement here!!

MA: Too late. Damage done. Next time I'll do generic.

Anyway, speaking of the camerawork, I??(TM)m not sure it worked in this movie. Whereas CLOVERFIELD did a brilliant job convincing the audience that the guy holding the camera should be holding the camera as opposed to dropping it and running for his life, I'm not so sure here. In this case, I think I would have dropped the camera and stopped filming long before the cameraman does in this film. In effect, he films the whole movie.

The difference here is setting. In CLOVERFIELD, the characters are running for their lives in the middle of New York City. One man isn't going to make much of a difference against a gigantic monster stomping skyscrapers. But in QUARANTINE, the characters are in a small apartment building...

LS: It's not that small! There are lots of places for monsters to hide.

MA: It's smaller than New York City, and there are less than a dozen people there. When things start going crazy, I think in this environment, you have to put the camera down and help out.

Now, this didn't bother me a whole lot. I mean, the guy's a journalist, so he's doing his job. So, it's not that it's unbelievable or anything. It's just that I didn't buy the concept as much as I did in CLOVERFIELD. To me, human nature would take over, the instinct to help others and later simply to save oneself, those feelings would win out, and that camera would be history long before it is in this movie.

LS: None of this bothered me at all. I've seen real footage of cameramen filming a disaster scene and they make no effort to drop the camera and get involved. It worked for me.

MA: True, but how many times have you seen real footage where the guy holding the camera continues to film when he himself is being attacked or chased?

LS: Actually, there is a scene where the cameraman uses his camera to bludgeon a zombie to death, so you're wrong about him not helping out.

(There is a loud shriek. LS and MA turn to see several zombie-like creatures attacking a man with a camera. As the CAMERAMAN falls to the ground with the creatures gnawing at his arms and legs, he continues to film.)

MA (points): See what I'm talking about?

LS (smiling): Neat! (Turns to MA) So, aren't you going to help him out, Mr. Compassion?

MA (motioning for LS to go first): Maniacs before gentlemen.

LS (laughs): But while there are obvious similarities between this movie and previous ???movies from the point of view of a cameraman??? (which are becoming a whole sub-genre of their own), I think the most apt comparison is with George Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD, which also shows us an attack by zombies from the POV of a cameraman. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that QUARANTINE is what DIARY should have been. I love Romero films, but DIARY seemed weak in a lot of ways as the characters scrambled from one location to another. In QUARANTINE, everything takes place in a building closed off from the outside world, which is ironically similar to Romero's classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. This actually gives us a stronger sense of suspense. In DIARY I also found myself really disliking several characters, but in QUARANTINE, there really wasn't much time to hate anybody; everything happens so fast once we get inside the apartment building.

And before anyone says "But this isn't a zombie movie," in a lot of ways, QUARANTINE follows the zombie movie template, despite the origins of its "creatures." Just like 28 DAYS LATER, which also had biological infection at its core, that movie and QUARANTINE fit the zombie movie mold to a "T."

(Behind them, the bloodied CAMERAMAN has returned to his feet with his camera and is taking a group shot of the zombie creatures, which put their arms around each other and smile for the picture.)

CAMERAMAN: Say "flesh."

ZOMBIES (smiling): Flesh!

(A flash goes off even though he's holding a video camera.)

MA (addressing audience): Hey, the gag works better with the flash. Creative license.

I was bothered much more by the darkness. Now, I know things were supposed to be dark, and that??(TM)s part of the fear factor here, but the bottom line was I really had a hard time seeing this movie, and that bugged me. I felt like I was missing a lot of the fun.

LS: Like I said, I had no problem with how it was filmed. I saw everything I needed to see.

MA: Good for you. (walks into wall). (getting up from floor) Turn some lights on in here!

LS: I can see fine.

MA: What, are you a bat?

LS (eyes glow red): Squeak, squeak.

MA: Err...okay. Another thing I found annoying was all the sirens in the background. Throughout most of the film, there are constant sirens outside. Wouldn't they have eventually stopped? Wouldn't there come a time when all the police and fire officials who were supposed to be on the scene arrived? And once they arrived, wouldn't they turn their sirens off? You'd think so. Geesh!

LS: I guess it didn't bother me at all, because after awhile I didn't even notice the sirens.

MA: Anyway, there were things I liked in the movie. The last sequence in that strange attic room I thought was very creepy, and it was interesting, because the scenes preceding it were intense and action-packed, and suddenly, we??(TM)re in a room looking around in darkness.

LS: With the help of night vision, which looks nice and creepy.

MA: It was a change of pace, in that it gave you a chance to breathe, but as you did, you became cognizant that what you were looking at was bizarre and weird. The result was a chilling scenario. I was really into this final scene.

LS: I liked it a lot, too. And it fills in a lot of the holes about what's going on.

MA: But then it was ruined because they showed the final---

LS: Whoa! SPOILER ALERT! (to audience) Skip the next three paragraphs if you don't want to know this.

MA: It??(TM)s not really a spoiler. The filmmakers are the ones who did the spoiling. Still, I guess your warning doesn't hurt. Anyway, they showed the final scene of this movie in the trailer! Half way through this movie, I'm thinking to myself, I bet that scene is the final scene of the movie. I hope it's not. Well, it was. So, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the end. To me, this ruined an otherwise scary ending. Shame on them!

LS: I was annoyed by this as well, and while I feel uncomfortable giving away a spoiler here, you're right in that the trailer pretty much did that before we could.

MA: Damn right, they did. That being said, I wouldn't tell folks not to see QUARANTINE because of this. It ruined the ending for me, but it didn't ruin the movie.

LS: Agreed. (Holds up a sign that reads, "Spoiler Ends.")

MA: Jennifer Carpenter as Angela was good in the lead role. We saw her a few years back in THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005) as Emily Rose, and she was okay in that okay movie. She's better here.

LS: Yeah, but even though I didn't care much for EMILY ROSE (a movie we also did a Cinema Knife Fight for, back in 2005), I was impressed with Jennifer Carpenter even then. These days, she's better known as Debra Morgan, Dexter's foul-mouthed cop sister on the Showtime series DEXTER. She??(TM)s great on that show, and she's very good here, in a pivotal role. The movie revolves around her, and she's definitely up for it. Carpenter shows she is more than capable of being the lead in a film. She also pretty hot, so I didn't mind her being on screen a lot at all!

MA: I thought Jay Hernandez as Jake, the main fireman in the film who befriends Angela, was very good, too, as was Columbus Short as Danny, the policeman. Steve Harris played Scott, the cameraman. Harris used to be a regular on the David E. Kelley legal drama THE PRACTICE, a show which led to BOSTON LEGAL. Harris used to be excellent on THE PRACTICE. He's good here, but the off-screen character, as written, is nowhere near as interesting or entertaining as the very likeable cameraman in CLOVERFIELD.

LS: For horror fans, Jay Hernandez also played Paxton in the HOSTEL movies, and his fellow fireman Fletch is played by Jonathan Schaech: an actor who played the killer in one of Michael's favorite movies from earlier this year, PROM NIGHT.

MA: Yes, but you'll be happy to know I enjoyed QUARANTINE much more than PROM NIGHT. Can't say the same about HOSTEL though. Compared to torture movies, PROM NIGHT is better.

LS (visibly irritated): Let's save that argument for another time, since you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

MA: I know exactly what I'm talking about. You just don't agree with me.

LS: Some people might be curious to know that Schaech has also co-written episodes of MASTERS OF HORROR and FEAR ITSELF with his writing partner, Richard Chizmar, who publishes the magazine CEMETERY DANCE.

MA: I thought the screenplay for QUARANTINE by John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle was okay. Some of the dialogue was not as sharp as it could have been, especially in that beginning sequence at the fire station. The direction by John Erick Dowdle was sufficient, as there were plenty of intense moments, but I would have enjoyed his work more had I seen it more clearly.

LS: While I'm getting a bit tired of zombie movies these days, I have to admit that QUARANTINE worked for me. It moved quickly, with a good amount of suspense, and I sat there eager to see what would happen next. I guess the fact that I'm a hard sell on zombies at this point means QUARANTINE was a pretty good flick, to keep me on the edge of my seat throughout.

MA: All in all, I liked QUARANTINE. I think it could have been better, it could have been scarier, but it was a fun 90 minutes for me, and I think if you're in the mood to be scared, and to have fun being scared, you won't be disappointed. I recommend it, but don't expect a classic.

LS: I enjoyed it, too. Perhaps a bit more than you did. And I agree, it's not a classic. But for what it is, it's a good time.

BLOODIED CAMERAMAN: How about a picture?

MA and LS: Sure. Why not?

MA (to CAMERAMAN): Maybe you ought to have someone chewing on your leg. You seem to do your best work under duress.

(More ZOMBIES appear behind the CAMERAMAN and they are all growling and making menacing gestures.).

LS: Smart move. Insult the monsters.

MA: On second thought, let's not stick around for that picture.

(LS and MA turn to flee but find bars on apartment windows. There are sounds of helicopters and sirens coming from outside.)

LS: Now, what?

MA: Let's just walk off the set. (faces audience) Creative license.

(Bright lights come on and MA and LS walk off the set. Before they get away, though, creatures leap upon MA and pull him to the floor. There is loud shrieking.)

LS (both hands holding his face): Omigod, they killed Michael! You bastards!

(Winks at camera) Don't worry, kids. He'll be back next time.

---END---