Quarantine (2008)
Directed by John Erick Dowdle
A television reporter and her cameraman are trapped inside a building quarantined by the CDC after the outbreak of a mysterious virus which turns humans into bloodthirsty killers.
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What critics compared Quarantine to
Remember, there’s a creepy basement and if you’ve seen the trailer, it feels like Cregger is paying homage to the 2008 found footage thriller “Quarantine,” a remake of the much better 2007 Spanish film [*REC].
One of the main reasons that “Devil” fails is the decision by writer Brian Nelson (working from a story by Shyamalan) and director John Erick Dowdle (“Quarantine”) to make the lead a character not trapped in the elevator.
Director John Erick Dowdle did a fine job capturing the claustrophobic atmosphere of an apartment building in lockdown with 2008's " Quarantine ," but the even tighter confines of an elevator elude him.
Despite the stink coming off the picture due to Shyamalan’s participation, “Devil” was actually directed by John Erick and Drew Dowdle, the filmmaking team behind the crummy 2008 horror remake, “Quarantine.”
But fear not: even though M. Night did pen this supernatural thriller, screenwriter Brian Nelson (30 Days of Night) and director John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) have stepped in to help diffuse the familiar Shyamalan stink.
The Dowdles are responsible for "Quarantine" and "The Poughkeepsie Tapes," and they're talented horror filmmakers who have proven they've got the chops to genuinely unsettle an audience.
Although the Quarantine director John Erick Dowdle is at the helm, Shyamalan's fingerprints are present all through this film, which begins interestingly enough but quickly races through to the finish line with little fuss or surprises.
It sounds like a pre-packaged community haunted house scenario, but it’s a moderately skillful exercise in style that should help get the Dowdles’ long shelved, and similarly filmed, The Poughkeepsie Tapes , into theaters.
It can't be easy to make a movie cohesive that's tension-fraught, able to convey a story arc and keep a collective cast of characters who're cloaked in darkness and saddled with screaming, but somehow director John Erick Dowdle (The Poughkeepsie Tapes) does just that.
At least director John Erick Dowdle—who also went the found-footage horror route with The Poughkeepsie Tapes—stopped short of having snot drip from Carpenter’s overstressed nostrils.
Director John Erick Dowdle (of the unreleasable “The Poughkeepsie Tapes”) crafts a straightforward copy of the Spanish film, preserving the same plot and scare beats, but altering the corners of the writing to put his fat stamp on the picture.
Like an unfortunately large number of genre filmmakers in the last 30 years, John Erick Dowdle (whose similar "found footage" serial killer flick The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been waiting on a release date for well over a year now) willfully and blindly conflates "horrifying" with "gory", nor does he really seem to grasp the concept of the slow build - no, every scare is blatantly telegraphed, and pretty much the only card up the director's sleeve is to quickly pan over to a pasty-faced ghoul with blood all down its front.
Promising writer-director John Erick Dowdle and co-writer Drew Dowdle (their much-acclaimed, much-delayed debut, "The Poughkeepsie Tapes," currently gathering dust on MGM's shelf) stay mostly faithful to " [REC] " while diverging just enough to make this new version their own.
![[REC] poster](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/hgyJR4sgMsee6xMFM3xYiG6cDCh.jpg)
As of this writing in October 2008, mere days before the release of its obligatory U.S. remake, " Quarantine ," the Spanish-language "[REC]" has yet to be released in America.
It was remade in the U.S. as Quarantine.
If you've seen a bootleg copy of Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's [Rec] then you've already seen this film, since it is almost a shot for shot remake of that one .
At least the horrors, as adapted for American by sibling filmmakers John Erick and Drew Dowdle from the Spanish film [Rec], are fairly hair-raising.
Like just about every horror film since The Ring, it's also a remake of a recent foreign fright flick, in this case the 2007 Spanish chiller [Rec].
Quarantine is a Hollywood remake of the Spanish horror film [Rec] (a reference to the “record” button on a hand-held video camera).
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It’s a real shame, too, because director John Erick Dowdle–whose credits include 2008’s muddled Quarantine and 2010’s effective Devil— creates moments that recall the claustrophobic terror of the awesome spelunking epic The Descent .
Director and co-writer John Erick Dowdle (who directed the [REC] remake Quarantine and the hell-in-a-lift thriller Devil ) has creepy fun with the crawl spaces through which our motley crew must venture in search of an alchemical stone buried at the gates of hell.
Director John Erick Dowdle revisits the found footage technique of his earlier "Quarantine," and those who suffer from claustrophobia will likely have a rough time with this movie.
That writer-director John Erick Dowdle (2010's " Devil ") and co-writer Drew Dowdle (2008's " Quarantine ") were permitted by the French government to shoot down there is a major get in and of itself, but even more amazing is the allowance they received to voyage to heretofore illegal areas off-limits to the general public.
However, this being a modern, low-budget horror effort, director John Erick and co-writer Drew have adopted the all-but-exhausted “found footage” angle with which they had previously made their [REC] remake, Quarantine.
Returning to the faux-doc format they helped innovate in such pics as “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” and “Quarantine,” the Dowdle brothers, John Erick (who directs) and Drew (his fellow producer), are by now experts at creating suspense within narrow confines.