QUARANTINE

The television journalist Angela Vidal is intent on documenting, together with her cameraman, the life of the firefighters of Los Angeles on duty during the night hours. The firefighters receive a call from a building in the city center where it seems an accident has occurred to an elderly woman. The journalist goes with them, but soon she finds herself documenting a situation of pure horror: in the building a contagion is spreading that turns the infected into rabid and bloodthirsty madmen. The health authority blocks all escape routes to contain the contagion, so for the inhabitants of the building, the journalist, her colleague, and the firefighters the only goal is to survive. It's the beginning of the year, in Italian theaters arrives a foreign mockumentary that tells the story of a television reporter and her cameraman who, intent on making a truthful service on the fire department, find themselves in a condominium where a strange epidemic spreads capable of transforming human beings into rabid murderous monsters… No, you are not in the presence of an unsettling déjà vu nor some sort of curse that makes you relive the year just passed from the beginning, perhaps as it happened, with the same identical day lived infinitely, to Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day." It's not 2008, it's the new year, it's not "[REC]," it's its carbon copy. We are naturally talking about "Quarantine," the last, only in chronological order, example of American cannibalization at the expense of most of the cinematography that is not made in the USA. In recent years, in fact, it has become a very widespread trend among American producers and major studios to acquire the rights to films that are not in English and then remake them at home, either for lack of ideas or for the aim of guaranteed profits, or for both reasons. But if from a commercial point of view, and perhaps even from the point of view of the American spectator who otherwise would hardly enjoy the viewing of certain films, the choice could seem even shareable, the same cannot be said when approaching the matter from the privileged point of view of the Italian spectator, who being able to have any foreign film anyway dubbed in Dante's language finds himself, a bit too often lately, in front of the viewing of films identical, or almost, to each other. And if, wanting, one can close an eye in some cases, from the remake of the Asian film that perhaps enjoyed poor distribution even with us to the "Funny Games" proposed again, in any case, ten years later, the same cannot be done with "Quarantine," arrived in the peninsula at a very short distance from "[REC]," a questionable choice of the Italian distribution that instead of betting on gems still unjustly unreleased in the beautiful country decides to propose, after only 336 days, the faded copy of the same film. And already, because that's what it is, a faded copy. The poor spectator will not only find himself in front of a film he has already seen but will not be able to enjoy the beauty he remembered but rather of a pale clone infinitely weaker. If the Americans at least limited themselves to simply remaking it exactly the same, the only nuisance we would encounter would be that of having to deal with something already seen, but here the damage goes beyond the joke. In the Yankee there must be a strong sense of superiority, an unbounded self-esteem, otherwise it would not be explained why they want at all costs to get their hands on something that already worked wonderfully - a tendency found in the vast majority of titles remade in the States - ending up, most of the time, worsening the initial result. Something that happens punctually even in this case thanks to, or rather because of, the work in the screenplay phase of the brothers Drew and John Erick Dowdle, with the second also in charge of directing. The story of "Quarantine," most of the events, the shots are the same as those of "[REC]" but where the film tries to differentiate itself it fails miserably, greatly weakening, if not disintegrating, the final result. The high level of tension of the Spanish predecessor is missing, its strong sense of terror, its adrenaline shocks, the climax scenes do not have absolutely the same impact. In short, "[REC]" was scarier. In addition to losing a good part of the relational dynamics and the details of the story that will prove decisive in the arrival at the grand finale. The ending, the most painful point of the entire film, the greatest and most serious difference with the original, which loses that touch of Iberian genius capable of totally mixing the cards on the table, of taking away from the spectator that security that was being created about the causes of the disaster leaving him, at the end of the viewing, with more than one question, to point to an obtuse rationalization of the events that cannot naturally arouse any thrill in the viewer except that of a boring irritation. But after all, if already from the title of the film, its posters, and its trailers it was clear how much the production had renounced in advance to that delicious aura of mystery and to the attempt to surprise the public, one could not certainly expect a rehabilitation in extremis in the last five minutes of the film. Among the few positive novelties of "Quarantine" we can mention some appreciable splatter inserts such as broken legs or severed fingers, and a couple of new sequences such as that of the sniper or, above all, the killing with camera blows with plenty of sympathetic blood splashes on the lens. The two protagonists move well, two familiar faces to horror fans: Jennifer Carpenter, fantastic in the role of the possessed in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," and Jay Hernandez, already tortured in the first "Hostel" and met with a worse fate in the second. In short, whether you have seen "[REC]" or not, our advice is still to put the film by the Dowdle brothers in quarantine and dedicate that hour and a half that you had planned for the jewel of Balagueró and Plaza, the result in that case will certainly be satisfying: if it is the first time you will have filled a gap and recovered a great film, if you had already seen it... don't run the risk of seeing it worsened! It deserves half a pumpkin more.