Writer: Syahida Kamarudin

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Watch this if you liked: "Cloverfield", "28 Weeks Later", "Noroi: The Curse"

It's all about shaky camerawork nowadays as another horror movie arrives at our shores. Since first popularised by "The Blair Witch Project", some horror films have been using the same technique over and over again, making people nauseous and scared all at the same time. It might be sickening, but it works!

"Quarantine", a remake of the award-winning Spanish horror "[REC]" is no exception. It's fair to say that the handheld camera technique has helped a lot in bringing out the feel of the film from the already formidable plot. Through such realistic camerawork, the audience is taken on a journey of fear, not only of the mysterious threat inside the building but the fear that is felt by the cameraman himself, in this case, the Afro-American Scott, as he and the main character Angela run, hide and fight their way to safety from the terror that has befallen upon them the moment they decided to catch a group of fire-fighters in action on camera.

Jennifer Carpenter gave an interesting performance as the lead Angela Vidal. Like the camerawork, she started off quite shaky, and made this reviewer a bit confused when she very American-ly calls herself Angela "Vy-dull" instead of "Vee-dal". However, she starts to get better and better every minute and by the time the action starts to intensify, you can smell the fear and paranoia coming from her and it feels very real. You almost want to slap her for being so annoyingly freaked!

Kudos to the writers responsible for the interesting plot. Instead of your normal zombie tragedy of 'scientific-experiments-gone-wrong', the last 15 minutes turns it into something more superior to your B-grade zombie movie. The only bane is of course the fact that at times you will feel like getting inside the movie and hold Scott's hand so he won't shake the camera too much.

And if you watch the movie by yourself, don't forget to observe couples and see which is scarier - the movie itself, girls faking shrieks so that their boyfriend will hold them, or guys holding on to their girlfriends in genuine fear.

Cinema Online, 17 November 2008