Quarantine 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")

While QUARANTINE was the American remake of the Spanish zombie film REC, QUARANTINE 2: TERMINAL is not a remake of REC's sequel, REC 2. Instead, it's a stand-alone sequel that sees a group of survivors struggling to cope when one of their number is infected during a routine flight from LAX.

Sadly, QUARANTINE 2 turns out to be as familiar and by rote as you'd expect from this stagnating genre. The whole zombie thing has truly be done to death (or should that be un-death?) these past few years, and nowhere is that more evident than here. In fact, this isn't even the first zombies-on-a-plane film I've watched; I've already had the misfortune of sitting through FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, which was equally poor.

Most of the film is set within the bowels of an airport terminal, which just has the normal disused warehouse look to it. The small cast are full of uninteresting characters and the acting is uniformly bland from the entire group. The director has some experience of writing cheesy B-movies but his inexperience behind the camera shows. They also get rid of the whole 'found footage' aspect here, which was a bit disappointing; at least it would have made the attempted scares more immediate.

Well, "Quarantine 2: The Terminal" was nothing like "Rec 2".

It was a really good thing that they had not chosen to do yet another frame by frame remake of the original Spanish "Rec 2", as they did with "Rec" which turned into "Quarantine". The way Hollywood need to Americanize and turn foreign successful movies into American adoptions is just beyond my comprehension. Anyway, thankfully they had decided to go a total different way with "Quarantine 2: The Terminal" contra "Rec 2".

There wasn't much new thinking to this movie, which made me wonder, was this movie really necessary? Basically you have the same ingredients from "Quarantine", just set at a different location - this time being an airplane and an airplane terminal. And with most of the movie filmed in the dark and in maintenance area, it seemed like they had taken that from the "Resident Evil" movie and just realigned it for usage in this movie. It was very unoriginal and very unnecessary.

Now, moving on, the story itself was not bad, actually was an adequate continuation of the story told in "Quarantine". And the characters were good and believable, and were played well enough as well. I just had a problem with the lack of lighting in the movie. I hate horror movies that are shot almost completed in the dark. It is so 80's and so annoying.

I was not familiar with any of the people in the movie, and I think it is nice to see a movie being made without major Hollywood names on the cast list to lure you in. And with the cast they had put together here, they actually made to get a good end result with the acting.

Personally I am more of a fan of horror movies in their original versions and languages, be it Spanish, Japanese, Korean, etc. The way Hollywood need to cash in on the success of foreign movies ticks me off. Mostly the results of the movies turns out to be an insult to the original language version. "Quarantine 2: The Terminal", however, was as far from "Rec 2" as could be, and as such, it was not a bad experience. It was an overall average horror movie, though it lacked new ideas and concepts, it was all a bit too old and stale - used before.

"Quarantine 2: The Terminal" will be a good addition to the "Quarantine" series if you liked the first one. If you, like me, prefer the original Spanish "Rec" movies, then "Quarantine 2: The Terminal" doesn't come up to the knees of those. But for an Americanized version, it wasn't too shabby.

In case you didn't know, 'Quarantine 2: The Terminal' is the sequel to a movie (Quarantine, oddly enough) which was, in itself, a remake of (an excellent) Spanish horror film, 'REC.' Both REC and the first Quarantine movie were primarily known for being shot entirely through the use of hand-held/first-person video footage. However, in the sequel, they do away with the 'point of view' aspect for the most part and what you're left with is a pretty standard zombie movie.

And the zombies are the 'infected' type (if you haven't seen 28 Days/Weeks Later that means they run and are generally a lot faster) as opposed to the classic 'shuffler' zombies. So, a flight is grounded in a terminal and the plane's passengers have to survive inside a terminal while zombies pick them off one by one.

As a standard zombie movie it does the job. It has a few moments where the (fast) zombies jump out and grab someone. However, it's never more than average. You'll find it hard to recognise any actor and the characters are also the standard clichéd types you'd expect from a straight-to-DVD release.

If you're not completely tired with zombie movies, you might like this one, otherwise, stick with an early George Romero movie or the Walking Dead.