Quarantäne 2 - Terminal

A plane is taken over by a mysterious virus. When the plane lands it is placed under quarantine. Now a group of survivors must band together to survive the quarantine.

A sequel to a remake... that is the first thing that will come to your mind. First they remade "Rec" and now they have made a sequel to that remake. (Oddly enough, "Rec 2" has a preview on this DVD.) But do not be fooled... this film diverges from the remake and has nothing to do with "Rec", so trying to compare them is more than just a tad unfair.

Many people consider this film to be better than the first one (including Fangoria's Michael Gingold), which initially came as a shock to me. But those people may just be more vocal. The silent majority (those who vote on IMDb) currently (August 2, 2011) have the first film at 6.1 and the sequel at 5.5 -- neither are numbers to brag about, but one hopes to get at least a 6, right? I will remain silent on this debate, though I will say this film was better than expected.

In fact, let me lay it on the line: this might be the most pleasant surprise of the year. While I feel as a horror fan I was obligated to at least check it out (and not necessarily like it), I found the film kept my attention very well, even in the wee hours of the night. I would recommend this to just about anyone -- even if they never saw the first film! (The connection is mild and easily explained, so you need not be intimately familiar with the first.)

The DVD is not much to speak of -- there are no special features whatsoever, aside from some previews (which are more annoying than anything, considering that if you watch the movie five years from now, they will not be new anymore). But the film itself has enough action, gore and more to sell itself, at least for a rental.

The plot is thin, pretty much "Night of the Living Dead" or "The Crazies" but in a different location. But then, most films (especially horror) are derivative, so I will not harp on them too much for this. They make up for it with some decent gore, blood and vomit (one head-bashing scene is pretty great). I am sad the director chose to tastefully censor a suicide, but oh well.

The scene that will stick in your mind? A needle sequence that might make many viewers squeamish! I will say it is the best needle scene I can recall since Dario Argento's "Opera". If you watch this film for no other reason, let this be why. I give it my seal of approval.

In Los Angeles, the police put a residential building in quarantine. Meanwhile, the flight attendants of the Trans Sky Air Jenny (Mercedes Masöhn) and Paula (Bre Blair) are welcoming the passengers of the flight TS Air 318 from Los Angeles to Kansas City with Captain Forrest (John Curran) and Co-Pilot Wilsy (Andrew Benator). The teacher Henry (Josh Cooker) brings a cage of hamsters to the cabin, but Jenny tells him that it should be transported in the cargo hold. However, one hamster bites the fingertip of the fat passenger Ralph (George Back).

Sooner, Ralph vomits and becomes aggressive, attacking Paula. The male passengers help Jenny and lock Ralph in the bathroom while Captain Forrest requests an emergency landing. When they land in the airport, they find all the gates closed and the Captain heads the plane to an abandoned terminal. The employee Ed (Ignacio Serricchio) helps the crew and passenger to reach the exit, but they find that they are closed. Sooner they discover that the place is in quarantine and there is no way out.

"Quarentine 2: Terminal" is a surprisingly entertaining horror film, with a refreshing story of deadly virus and good performances. My expectations were very low, since the first "Quarentine" is a simple rip- off of "REC". However, the writers have succeeded in this American sequel, since they changed the religious focus of "REC 2" that happens inside the same building to a terrorist (the present American paranoia) view, with the virus outbreak in a flight. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Quarentena 2" ("Quarentine 2")

There isn't really all that much to say about this movie, except that it's pretty much more of the same. It wears its influences on its sleeve, being highly derivative of 28 Days Later, which itself was already fairly derivative. If this is a big problem for you, I'd suggest that you avoid Quarantine 2, because you're just going to get mad at how little originality is on display.

Instead of remaking Rec 2, this movie is more of a standalone story set in the same universe as Quarantine. This time, instead of being set in an apartment complex, it's briefly set on an airplane, then a terminal. Rec (and Quarantine, the American remake) was notable for being shot first person, while this movie is not. That might disappoint some people, but I wasn't really fond of the trend in the first place. The story is contemporaneous with the story of the first movie, with brief references to it here and there. You don't need to have seen the first movie, but that's partially because this movie is so derivative of other movies, you've already seen this plot several times before. That said, as far as these sorts of movies go, this was fairly well acted and competently directed, though the director falls back on using extremely loud noises as a rather annoying crutch. Just when you think there might be character development, extended dialogue, or a moment for reflection, there's an extremely loud noise and a rabid person bursts through a wall. Often, first time directors will err on the side of slow pacing, though I think the characters obviously suffered a bit for the relentlessly fast pacing. The writer/director also wrote Ghost Ship, which was laughably bad. Unfortunately, he hasn't really progressed as a writer since then. I guess if you didn't mind Ghost Ship, you won't be offended by this, either. However, as silly as I found Rec 2's supernatural aspect, it was an interesting twist to the whole "rage virus" subgenre of horror movies. Quarantine 2 plays it straight and just lets loose a bunch of rabid humans on a clichéd group of people who perpetually seem to populate the scripts of hack writers.

If I seem overly harsh, it's only because I'm tired of watching the same movie over and over with very little variation. If you're a fan of scifi/action/horror movies, you've seen this all before, right down to the characters, the action sequences, and the supposed "homages". Why bother being original if nobody calls you on your lack of creativity?

I've seen both Rec and Quarantine, and enjoyed both of them immensely. Quarantine 2 was not a movie I had my heart on seeing, basically because I didn't think it could live up to the standard of its predecessor (or the Spanish original.) On that count, I was right. This isn't as good as the first movie. Having said that, one of my tests for any horror movie is whether it has the ability to scare you and make you jump. This one does that, so I have to call it a good movie. It has a lot of chills and jump out of your seat moments, my wife actually screamed at least twice that I recall. It works, in other words. That fright quality isn't as sustained as it is in the first movie, though. In fact, this is pretty slow off the top. A few people board an airplane and they're not feeling too well. If you've seen the first movie, then you know what's happening (or, more to the point, what's going to happen) so you're basically just waiting for it.

One thing that I noted was that the events of this movie were taking place at the same time as the events of Quarantine. In fact, one of the airplane passengers is using the airplane's wifi to watch a news broadcast about the quarantined building in Los Angeles. While the disease and its effects are pretty much the same, there's more of an effort made here to get to the background and origins of the disease, which is really dealt with only in a few hints toward the end of Quarantine.

Quarantine (and Rec) are filmed in a "Blair Witch" style - hand held cameras recording the action as it takes place. Quarantine 2 takes a more standard approach to movie-making. I think the hand held camera idea has been done to death, quite frankly, so I didn't miss it. It's clear that the ending of this movie was also intended to set up another potential sequel. That was just a little too obvious. Basically, I'd say this isn't as good as the movies that spawned it, but as a horror movie it's still very effective. (7/10)

I did not have high hopes for this movie, since it was made straight to DVD. Yet, I loved it! There are plenty of jumpy parts, tolerable gore (for me), and creepy dark places. You have the usual common characters and dilemmas, some corny lines, but pretty decent acting for a low budget film. I recommend watching the first Quarantine movie before, this movie ties into it. Would give it a 10 but a lot of the dialog was so predictable. Anyone could have written them. So, don't expect the characters to be like the series, "The Walking Dead". However, if you just love watching movies that involve zombies, infections, apocalypse situations, and not overly stupid characters, then this movie should be added to your Watchlist!