Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on January 30, 200, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
When I first reviewed Quarantine here at the time of its theatrical release, I noted the difficulty in forming a completely objective view of its achievements, since it hews so closely to its inspiration, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [REC]. The comparison won’t be an issue for those who watch Sony Pictures’ Quarantine DVD without foreknowledge of its source, because the Spanish film isn’t mentioned anywhere in the disc’s quartet of bonus features. Not once.
Considering that writer/director John Erick Dowdle and writer/executive producer Drew Dowdle took so many specific visual and dramatic cues from [REC]—even, by some accounts, to the point of having a video copy of that movie on set while shooting their own—the lack of any acknowledgment is pretty disingenuous. Especially when, for example, producer Sergio Aguero says in the Locked In making-of featurette that John Dowdle “has taken a terrific premise and managed to make it his own” without noting who came up with that premise or how closely the director followed its paradigm. For those who are aware of [REC], its conspicuousness by its absence in the Quarantine supplements can only lead to conspiracy theories; did Sony, which has so far suppressed commercial release of Balagueró and Plaza’s feature in deference to the remake, issue a DVD gag order about it to the Quarantine team?
This issue aside, the extras are a pretty solid bunch, highlighted by an audio commentary by the Dowdles. They may not cite [REC] but they’re generous with their praise of their cast and team of craftsmen, pointing out all of their contributions. There’s also plenty of discussion about how they tackled the specific challenges of making a film seen entirely through the lens of a sole TV news camera, in which, by design, the takes become longer as the action in an apartment building overtaken by a rabies-like infection heats up. There are thoughtful dissections of individual (long) shots, revelations of tricks like the “Texas switch” involved in the bit with a rabid dog in an elevator and explanations of how they “carefully craft[ed] imperfections” and added audio FX to the scoreless feature to add to the reality and heighten the tension. And unlike many filmmakers who have been plucked from the indie world for assignments in the often more compromised studio realm, they wax gratefully on the advantages offered by a much bigger budget.
One of those advantages was the opportunity to shoot on a fully functional, four-story apartment-house set, an impressive construction that can be seen in Locked In. Here, all the main cast and crew address the process of creating a convincing found-footage feature, from the points of view of their various specialties. We briefly get to see the Quarantine team in the midst of takes (including a couple of blown ones), but it would have been nice to see this 10-minute segment expanded with a start-to-finish behind-the-scenes view of one of the longer setpieces. In Dressing the Infected, we get a brief but very satisfying peek at Robert Hall’s “makeup effects and props and special disgusting things,” including actress Dawn Ramirez getting her broken teeth and bloody contact lenses applied and Doug Jones in full prosthetics for his especially fearsome appearance. And Anatomy of a Stunt reveals the details of how an especially painful-looking fall was done without any injury to the person involved.
Visual slickness is kinda beside the point here, but the 1.85:1 transfer is very sharply mastered, and enhanced by an active Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that becomes increasingly unnerving as the urban dwelling transforms into a house of horrors. One small quibble about the letterboxing, though: Considering that what we’re supposedly watching is raw broadcast video, the movie might have played even more vérité if the image was presented in fullscreen. The disc is rounded out by a large collection of Sony trailers, including assorted direct-to-DVD sequels and…[REC] itself. Does this mean the movie will finally be allowed to come out from its enforced hiding soon so a wide U.S. viewership can finally experience it? Here’s hoping…
