Random Movie: Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

I’m quite sure there were not a bunch of rabid fans demanding a sequel to 2008′s Quarantine, which if you recall was an almost shameless American rip-off of the Spanish film [REC]. Where [REC] was pretty well received and produced a decent sequel, Quarantine was merely an okay film bogged down by the fact that it fails at portraying supposedly real events with the polished and recognizable Hollywood actors. For that film’s sequel, writer/director John Pogue drops the found footage angle and sets up a storyline almost parallel to the events of the first. And it works for the most part.

I chuckle at direct-to-video titles since they seem to fall into the trap of either a) crap that no one should see ever or b) crap that no one should pay to see in a theater but is otherwise manageable. Quarantine 2 is more of the latter even though the direct-to-video distribution model has a stigma attached to it which may lead you to dismiss it more easily. None of the characters from the original return since they are, you know, ‘quarantined’ so this film is about a East coast bound plane from LAX that happens to house the virus, or whatever, from the first. Once an infected passenger starts biting the flight attendants and causing a ruckus, the plane is diverted and the passengers depart into a sealed off terminal. Mayhem ensues as the number of infected grow as the number of decent characters dwindle.

It is clearly obvious that this was always designed as a low-budget affair so I feel bad in picking on the film for that fact. It almost feels like picking on a club-footed kid for the way he walks since it isn’t really his fault. Even though Pogue has a scant amount of titles on his resume (most notable a film I hate with a deadly passion, The Skulls), he is able to use the low-budget pretty effectively even if that means a minimal amount of characters and a dearth of locales to venture in. Fortunately, the bulk of the movie does not take place on the plane but inside the airport terminal (Did you even catch the double entendre of Terminal?) which offers more hiding places for the zombies, err… infected people to jump out of. Even if some of the sets are puzzling (like a barren catering truck that for some reason is on a hydraulic jack), it provides the characters a few different places to hang out in to break up the monotony of run-rest-run that punctuates the story.

While the timeline that sets up the film betrays it, the story actually ties in nicely with that of the first film with one of the characters knowing a bit more about the sequestered apartment building than the rest. It is yet another deviation from the story of the original and its ‘sort of’ sequel [REC] 2 even if the human villain is a bit too expository than I would have cared for. Even though the story is rather clunky, the actors in charge of delivering it are good, or at least as good as you can get for a $4 million budget. Mercedes Masöhn turns in a good performance as the reluctant stewardess who steps into power after the other crew members are, well, rendered ineffective while Josh Cooke as the love interest/weird teacher guy is pretty one-note for the most part. I enjoyed Ignacio Serricchio as the random airport employee the most even though he does not have much to do other than lead the group to different places to try escaping.

It’s not Oscar-worthy or even worth a purchase but I will admit to having a case of the jumps or the creeps in appropriate scenes. Pogue uses the set-dressed terminal quite well in portraying a claustrophobic, yet open environment. Since it is available for $1 and change in Redbox or for free on Netflix, it’s worth giving Quarantine 2 a try. It’s not the best, but it’s far better than most zombie-esque movies available in the same venues.