I've started noticing a slowly-burgeoning trend in Hollywood where moderately successful movies will get sequels (often in name only) that go direct-to-video. It doesn't even matter if the movies are twenty years old, as Tom Hanks's Bachelor Party and Matthew Broderick's WarGames both got sequels in 2008. But it's usually more recent movies that get the direct-to-video treatment. There's a ton of them, but we're here today to discuss one in particular.
The movie in question is Quarantine 2: Terminal. When the first Quarantine was released in 2008, I was less than impressed with it. It was a mediocre effort from start to finish, and it left me particularly disappointed because I absolutely love [∙REC], the Spanish movie it was remaking. But I figured I'd give Quarantine 2 a shot anyway. I have to admit that I was curious about it, since I'd heard that it would be going its own way, neither remaking [∙REC] 2 nor using the "found footage" style that Quarantine and the [∙REC] movies utilized. So let's check it out and see how it goes.
It all began as a simple night at work for Jenny (Mercedes Masöhn), a flight attendant working on a late-night flight from LAX to Nashville. With only four crew members and a dozen passengers, Jenny isn't expecting any trouble. But trouble is what she gets when one of the passengers becomes stricken with an unidentified illness, puking all over Jenny before going absolutely ballistic. He makes a run for the cockpit, in such a berserk rage that it takes practically everyone on the plane to restrain him.
His violent outbursts are enough to warrant the pilots making an emergency landing in Las Vegas. But when the passengers and crew get off the plane and into the terminal, they're horrified to learn that they've been locked inside due to a military quarantine. The virus that struck the apartment building in Quarantine is now loose among this new group of people, and Jenny and her fellow survivors are forced to deal with the ever-growing number of bloodthirsty infected.
A direct-to-video sequel to a movie that was mediocre to begin with doesn't sound like the most promising of movies. You tend to approach movies like this with a "this is probably gonna suck" mentality. But Quarantine 2 isn't that bad. I can't call it a good movie, but it works. It's the best movie it could have been. And really, that's all you need sometimes.
The movie was written and directed by John Pogue, a screenwriter whose Hollywood career has thus far been unremarkable. Quarantine 2 is his directorial debut, and I can't say I thought he did that bad a job. As I said in the introduction, Pogue made the brave decision to not only avoid remaking [∙REC] 2 but to scrap the "found footage" style altogether. His inexperience as a director is obvious, as the movie is mostly a by-the-numbers affair. But I did find that he managed to retain Quarantine's atmosphere despite the stylistic change.
Pogue manages to generate some legitimate tension, particularly in the scene where the first infected person tries getting into the plane's cockpit. But he sadly can't maintain that tension all the way to the end. The movie doesn't really have any sort of climax; it peters out until the movie just sort of stops. Part of that is due to the script, which I'll get into in a second. But it's also because Pogue burns himself out too quickly and can't sustain the pace for the entire movie.
At least Pogue's direction is better than his writing. His screenplay actually hurts the movie more than hit helps. Not only does it boast some inexcusable plot holes (how the hell was a character able to get a handgun onto an airplane with his luggage?!), but the characters are underdeveloped as well. They go beyond one-dimensional and become caricatures. There's also the banal dialogue, a plot that's way too similar to the first half of Resident Evil: Degeneration for my taste, and some really dumb moments. Seriously, I didn't understand why almost all of the characters treat Jenny with hostility after the plane lands, as if everything bad that's happening is her fault. Yeah, like some poor stewardess that's as freaked out as everybody else was the cause of all of it.
And like I said before, the climax isn't really all that climactic. Yeah, Pogue could have fixed that from the director's chair. But he should have at least come up with an ending that was more of a bang than a whimper. It makes the movie feel like you were running a race at 90 miles an hour before slowing down and finally crawling a foot from the finish line. It makes me pine for the first Quarantine, where the only real problem with the ending was that they put it on the poster.
I'll give the cast credit for trying to overcome some of the script's deficiencies. Though not all of the actors stand out, there were a few that I thought were worth talking about. Noree Victoria is likable as a friendly Army medic and Josh Cooke is great as the sleazy, manipulative prick du jour. The best among them is Mercedes Masöhn, who I thought was engaging and enjoyable. Unfortunately, I can't say I particularly cared for Mattie Liptak. Not only did his Justin Bieber haircut and wardrobe really rub me the wrong way (a superficial thing to be upset about, I know), but Liptak's performance was really lacking in something that would make me want to watch him.
So how would I go about summarizing exactly how I felt about Quarantine 2? I guess I'd call it a promising movie that needed a slightly better execution. I honestly didn't think it was that bad a movie, just one that needed some improvement. I'll even concede that it made me want to see a third Quarantine movie. But in retrospect, maybe they should have just remade [∙REC] 2 instead. That could have been sweet.
Final Rating: **½
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