Quarantine, Better than Cloverfield.

I got a chance to watch Quarantine. Let me tell you, I felt tense even 2 hours after watching it. The movie is good as any horror movie, I can't imagine being being in a situation like that.

I thought the same thing about Cloverfield, but I was disappointed when I got to watch it. Fortunately I only paid $2.99, I downloaded it onto my ps3. Having the chance to pause it, turn it up or down and doing all this at the comfort of my couch was a bonus, but it didn't make up for the bad aspects of the movie. That camera shaking was ridiculous so I'm lucky I didn't pay the full theater price to watch it.

Quarantine in the other hand was worth watching on the big screen. The fright fest begins about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie. Once it starts, the suspense and thrills don't stop until the credits start rolling. The cast is good, and they play their roles well.

Sometimes I think I'm a bit of a freak about certain details at the movies, like the sounds not matching the scene, or simple bloopers. I'm also weird about could-that-truly-happen scenarios, I analyze them and try to imagine if they would be possible in the given situation. I'm happy to say that I didn't find either one of those problems with this movie, and maybe that means that they weren't there. Maybe it means that the movie was so engrossing that I didn't notice them; either way is a thumbs up for me.

When I bring up issues of Cloverfield vs Quarantine, I'm only doing it so because thematically they're similar. They're both about a terrible and frightening situation, apocalyptic to some degree and truly horrifying. They share the style of the movie, both movies are shot from the point of view of the cameraman as the events unfold. They both are supposed to have the feeling of a home movie, or a movie reel that hasn't yet made it to the cutting floor.

In the case of Cloverfield, the camera guy is an amateur, just "a guy at a party" that shoots the whole thing with a small consumer style camcorder. Quarantine in the other hand, is shot by a more professional cameraman and he's using what appears to be a professional camera. Unfortunately both movies use some of the cheap tricks I hate about these kind of movies. Dark scenes, out of focus shots and a ridiculous and unrealistic amount of camera shake. Enough with the shaky camera!

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The cameras shake a lot, remember Blair Witch Project? I think they nailed it on the whole camera shaking technique. In general though, the overuse of the shaking is really frustrating, this is extremely notable in Cloverfield; some people report getting nausea after or during the movie. Quarantine is not as bad with the shaking, but they instead use a lot of dark scenes and out of focus shots. I understand that this is something that might really happen in a disaster, but I still think that its a cheap way to scare us and keep us guessing what's around the next corner; without ever really showing you of course. But seriously, we get it, the cameraman gets the crap scared out of him and he misses a shot, or shakes the camera uncontrollably as the beast runs past him. That's fine, and expected of course, but its really obvious and rather insulting to the audience if you do this each time something actually happens. Both movies' events unfold in a period of less than a day, and the camera guys are always around some sort of major action --duh... there wouldn't be a movie without these unlucky characters right? Fine, but wouldn't you think that in the period of 10+ hours they would get a steady shot at least a few times?

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Anyway, that's enough about that rant, I really did like Quarantine and I recommend that you catch it while is in theaters. I would not have said this about Cloverfield, and definintely don't bother with Lakeview Terrace; I saw that a couple weeks ago, also not worth $10.00. If you do go see Quarantine, you might get a glimpse at a new movie starring Megan Fox; The Unborn I think its called, and that looks like it could scare the pants out of everyone. here's the trailer... doesn't the girl look a lot like Megan Fox? Her name is actually Odette Yustman and coincidentally she was in Cloverfield. Another really hot girl in The Unborn is Meagan Good.

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Here's the trailer to The Unborn in case you're curious.