QUARANTINE 2008

QUARANTINE is a 2008 American found-footage horror film directed and written by John Erick Dowdle, based on the film “ REC” by Jaume Balaguero, Luiso A. Berdejo and Paca Plaza, the director of photography is Ken Seng, edited by Elliot Greenberg, production designer is Jon Gary Steele, produced by Doug Davison, Roy Lee and Sergio Aguero, and this film released by Screen Gems. This film is a documentary horror film. Documentary films are vehicles for the de-archivization of materials that the means through which records are taken from house arrest and moved into new arrangements of narrative and meaning as well as released into circulation and made available to view publics. But films also produce and preserve archival records that turning fragments of the present into materials available of the future. Janus-faced, films can confound the boundaries between the spatialized time of the fixed record and the temporalized space of the unfolding present. Even though film reels are material things that can be stored, films are unusual archival objects in that they cannot be held like a photograph or a paper-based document and they exist as films only when they are placed into motion through playback and enter into contact with the contingencies of viewership.

A documentary is a non-fictitious representation of the reality. Nonfiction report that devotes its full time slot to one thesis, often under the guidance of a single producer. Documentary film was originally shot on film stock but now includes video and digital productions that can be the direct-to-video, made as a television program or released for screening in cinemas. It uses present and actual material like recordings, statistics or interviews in order to treat social issues with certain interest for public. The first person who uses the concept “documentary” was John Grierson. According to J. Grieson documentary is just a publish method where a creative treatment is done of the reality. He adopted this term after reviewing the movie “Moana” of Robert Flaherty. They were single-shot moments captured on film, called Actuality films. During the firsts years of the 20^th century some scientists like is the case of Eugene-Louis Doyen and Gheorhge Marinescu made several films in their scientific work. In this century the main feature of the films was their time duration, they were extremely short and a minute or less. Pre 1900 films were black and white productions. In 1914 different documentaries appeared with a longer structure known as storytelling documentaries. It is the case of Edward S. Curtis’ film which show the real hard life conditions of American natives such as In The Land Of The Head Hunters in 1914. Besides, Robert J. Flaherty recorded in 1922, Nanook of the North, which is considered the first documentary of the history. It is linked to Romanticism features. Reenactment and setting the scene was commonplace in early documentaries. It is focused on the tradition of human made within human-environment. It was one of the firsts newsreels. Not only that, documentary films are said to have their origins in Visual Anthropology. It is a sub field of cultural anthropology that is concerned with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and new media. It emerged as an academic discipline in the 1880’s. The history of anthropology can be defined by the work of 4 men who is Jean Rouch, John Marshall, Robert Gardner, and Tim Asch.

The synopsis of QUARANTINE is the reporter Angela and her cameraman Scott are doing a story on night-shift firefighters for a reality-TV program. A late-night distress call takes them to a Los Angeles apartment building, where the police are investigating a report of horrific screams. The TV team and emergency workers find an old woman, who suddenly attacks with teeth bared. What is more, Angela and company find that the building has been sealed by CDC workers. Then the attacks really begin. The only thing left to tell the tale is the reality TV, the show’s TV and camera.

This film has represent some of the theory of documentary which is reflexive and observational. Reflexive constructs subjective truths significant to the filmmaker and stress the emotional complexity of experience. For example, the cameraman, Scott is testing the camera by talking “one, two, three” at the opening scene. Besides, Observational in that interview or interact with subjects that filmmakers move from behind the camera and appear as subjects in their own work. Through the observation, there are some fact in this film. Firstly, the transmission is an animal infected with rabies carries the virus in its saliva, so if it bites somebody, the virus has a way into the person’s body. In rare cases, rabies can be spread when infected saliva gets into an open wound or the mucous membranes, such as the mouth or eyes. Secondly, symptoms of rabies include irritability, excessive movements or agitation, confusion, extreme sensitivity to bright lights, sounds or touch, and increased production of saliva or tears, nausea, experience delirium, paralysis with weak muscles and red eyes due to increased tear production. Thirdly, the reality of quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick CDC restricts any passage in and out of the area until they know what contagious disease their dealing with. Production for the public is the main concern, so they will keep everyone in the building under any means necessary. Fourthly, the testing fo rabies is that a diagnosis of rabies can be made after detection of rabies virus from any part of the affected brain, but in order to rule out rabies, the test must include tissue from at least two locations in the brain, preferably the brain stem and cerebellum. The only proven test is to examine the brain for the rabies virus. Blood tests have proven not to be reliable. This is because rabies is so serious, the test needs to be as accurate and reliable as possible.

In summary, QUARANTINE is a half-assed attempt to remake one of the scariest films ever made and, despite being filmed with six times the budget, fails to improve upon or even match any of the aspects of the original.