Watched: Quarantine 2

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    Good afternoon peeps; last time I dropped by some thoughts and progress on games I had been playing recently.  I hope to be able to work in a session of Snatcher tonight, since that slipped by over the weekend.  As for Zelda ALTTP I'm stuck on the wizard; that tower is no joke, but I'm pretty much used to its rooms now.  It's solely the wizard battle that's the challenging bit.  It's not even so much being unable to hit him as it is when he shoots off that lightening...maybe I should try pseudo-kiting him w/ the boomerang or a bomb...something, b/c my current strategy is quite flimsy.

    Anyway, the real reason I'm here is to share my thoughts on a film I recently had the "pleasure" to watch.  It happened to be the sequel to one of my favorite films of 2008, the action-horror piece Quarantine.  The original Quarantine came out at about the tail-end of the 'shakycam horror film' craze that got kick-started w/ Blair Witch Project and was zealously overdone w/ Cloverfield.  This might come as a surprise but I still HAVEN'T seen BWP; I've seen Cloverfield a few times and thought it was a fun movie with some solid action and sense of scale, but not anything too special (and its shaky cam effect was heavy-handed at times).

     Quarantine certainly isn't unique enough to be presented on some pedestal higher than those other two, but for what it was I enjoyed the film quite a lot.  It had a plausible, believable scenario, a good 'limited' setting to confine the horror (intensifying it and the drama, since things are so near each other), and decent-to-solid performances from pretty much the whole cast.  Best of all, it had some real tension and gusto to it, and the shaky-cam effect wasn't hammered out to death (at least, not until near the ending parts).

      So imagine my surprise when I discovered there's a sequel.  Granted, this was a mixed, verging on tepid, feeling.  Like I said, Quarantine was one of the better horror films to had come out recently; on the merits of its technical accomplishments it probably deserved a sequel.  OTOH, it's kinda one of those movies where there isn't probably much room for a sequel.  The concept was solid, but not unique enough to spin a follow-up, regardless of how good the tension, drama, horror, acting etc. was...at least that's how I felt.  Apparently a few people in Hollywood felt otherwise and decided to try and push the series ahead; unfortunately what we end up with is one of those sequels that regresses most progress and looks absolutely flaccid in comparison to its predecessor.  It might even be bad enough to sully some of the good of the original, but I'd have to watch it again to confirm that...needless to say I'm not rushing to do so.

       I don't like having the plot for anything being spoiled for me, so let's just skip the plot synopsis and jump into ripping this one up, shall we?  The first mistake this film makes is something that should be obvious to anyone in the first five minutes:  it calls itself Quarantine 2.  Seriously, off the opening minutes in this, you would probably think this to be another Snakes on a Plane ripoff, a feeling that's only intensified in the following few scenes.  All the archetypes from that film are roughly on-board (pun unintended) here, right down to the dick of a douche who everyone would want to see the first killed.  It even works in the rats/lab rats angle, which could be analogous to snakes (granted, the first movie established the unfounded idea the virus was a form of rabies, and animals like rats can carry that virus.  But even so, the writers should have assumed we viewers, picking up on the SOAP feeling, would have tethered the lab rats as being analogous to the damn snakes).  The only difference we'd of had was a bunch of rampaging crazies running down the isles and hopping around the seats of an airplane...which is almost so convoluted (given the realistic horror scenario the movie wants to paint) to be funny.

       Thankfully, the plane only serves as the opening salvos for the movie as the cast quickly makes haste to the airport, which, like the apartment building of the first film, is closed off by the CDC.  Now that the plane was (somewhat) out of the picture, I was able to get the parallelisms out of my head and just focus on this movie in relation to the first..and that's when things got even worst.

      First off, one big problem with the cast is out of their hands; it falls back on the script being unable to define them interestingly.  We went from SOAP archetypes to rehash archetypes from the first movie.  Yes the archetypes weren't any more clever in that one, but it had good actors and good acting on its side.  This sequel, does not.  I can't recall a single noteworthy performance here, or maybe there were a few, but since their characters hugged so closely to similar types much better presented and defined in the first film, I couldn't notice.  Even w/o the shadow of the original looming over, the cast performance and character writing in this film could be called mediocre at best.

       But, I could live w/ that.  I did live w/ that...but the ending itself really bought the movie down several notches, since it highlighted some of the worst examples of poor logic I've come across recently.  Trying not to spoil it for anyone (I do think folks should watch this at least once; even bad films deserve their one chance, someone may find them enjoyable), let's just say that the obvious pick for survival manages to survive.  The big question is, "how did they survive by doing THAT?!?".  See, (this shouldn't be spoiling much) they manage to get out of the airport by morning the next day via a secret tunnel exit beneath the airport foundation and systems.

        I'm not so much taken aback by them escaping that route,...I'm not even that puzzled as to how the secret exit was in fact kept from all other employee's knowledge, or that the manager(s) of the airport in general. What I'm really shocked by is how the CDC and gov't failed to secure surroundings around those exits for containment.  W/ something as big as a viral outbreak, you would think they'd get a full blueprint schematic on the airport's infrastructure, including all possible exits, which would INCLUDE the sewer systems.  Yet by some miracle, they miss this one exit, which isn't too far off from the airport mind you (likely just beneath the air strip area), and the kid just carries off to the ending credits.

         Actually, what kinda ticked me off even more than that is how quickly the CDC, SWAT etc managed to leave the scene.  As I said before, the kid escapes the area not even 12 hours after everything goes down, but when they rise up out of the sewers (catching a shot of the airport), it looks extremely scarce, not really even a sign of patrolling units around.  One could argue the part of the airport shown then isn't where the cast was being held in at, but seeing that there were no signs of patrol units around even the relative area of the airport when the kid makes it out, it's probably not far of a stretch to say they might've packed up, called it a day and went back home before they missed their Today Show episode.  There's not even so much of a hint that they even did an inspection into the airport and surrounding area to see if the survivors were around where they thought they were, or even alive.

         Maybe that's where suspension of disbelief comes in...even the first movie had some questionable moments.  But at least in the original no one actually survives; whether CDC, SWAT etc. went to check in afterwards or left too early would be moot.  We the viewers knew everyone was dead, so they-even off-screen-would learn that fact eventually.  Here, however, a little kid just managed to escape from an area that by all accounts should have been secured, and the one shot of the airport we last see before the credits shows it to be sparsely populated w/ little vehicles and no reinforcements on-site.  For all we know, they're already gone, and for all we know they might not had even checked through all of the area before having done so.  Or maybe they did but the kid beats them to the punch and escapes...whatever.  I just felt that an area as big as an airport would of had a small militia force around all it's points and maybe even a quarter a mile outward...at LEAST someone guarding that goddamn, easy-to-spot sewer exit, geez!

           So that probably about closes it off for this one here; I can't really say what this movie did *right*, b/c I'd have to discern btwn technical and creative reasons.  It technically gets things right; the lighting is pretty accurate, color choices fine, sound on-point etc.  But it certainly plays by-the-numbers in all those regards, so nothing pops out in that sense either.  And, if something did, I probably didn't notice b/c the mediocrities of the plot and acting were diverting my attention.  In the end, that probably describes this movie best:  mediocre.  It's not an abomination.  It's not so painful to watch as to make you want to stab your eyeballs out.  It's not even so bad as to drive the thought of quit watching halfway through.  But that doesn't mean it's good; the movie just feels very plane jane and does very little to push anything terribly exciting.  Granted the original is no breakthrough either, but at least it has some good acting, tension, and plausible scenarios and logic on its side.

         And truly, it's the lapses in some logic here that kinda kill this movie for me.  I know about suspension of disbelief..I read manga xD.  Kidding aside, if something wants to make you put certain reasoning logic aside, it has to roughly come at you w/ an angle that already pushes into a more fictional scenario in comparison to reality.  Since Quarantine 2 is heavily stooped in realism and reality (from the setting, to the characters, to the abilities of those characters etc), it can't really ask for too much forgiveness in skimping on this or that logical possibility in regards to the plot.  But the stuff I touched on above...I feel the film REALLY pushes the line and I personally can't suspend my logic reasoning any longer.  So,..yeah, I'm not giving it a grade, but if it's not great but not a failure, and simply straddles in the middle..and we're basing off the public school grading system, you can probably guess what my grade would be ;)

          That's all I got for today; I'll be back this weekend w/ some more art (as usual), hopefully a couple of finished pieces.  Until then I hope you all continue to do well w/ your pursuits, as I'll try w/ mine.  Be awesome, and take care.  L8r.