Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)

Credits / Details

52%
Overall Rating

Ranked #3,542
...out of 20,698 movies

Genres: Horror Psychological Thriller Sci-Fi Horror Zombie Film

Connections: [REC]

A plane is taken over by a mysterious virus. When the plane lands it is placed under quarantine. Now a group of survivors must band together to survive the quarantine. --IMDb

Review by Chad
Added: August 2, 2011

There are two ways that you could look at Quarantine: as a remake and as a standalone film. As a standalone film, it was pretty good - it had a good storyline with some good scares, and it was an all-around decent horror flick. However, as a remake, it was totally unnecessary and paled in comparison to [REC], the movie that it was based upon. I recently checked out the sequel to [REC] and thoroughly loved where they took the storyline in that one, so I thought that it was only fair to check out the sequel to Quarantine to see what they did with it. Well, I can safely tell you that it is an original film with zero connection to [REC] 2, but I'm also forced to tell you that it has minimal connection to Quarantine as well.

The story begins with an airplane taking off into the night with about a dozen passengers and crew members on board. One of the passengers, Henry (Josh Cooke), has a carrier with a handful of hamsters in it, and in the process of getting the carrier loaded, one of the hamsters bites one of the other passengers. I don't think that it's much of a spoiler to tell you that these hamsters are infected with the virus from that apartment complex, and I also think that it's safe to say that the bitten passenger has about a half hour of traditional life left in him.

The plane is eventually forced to land, and - surprise! - is quarantined at the airport. None of the passengers or crew are allowed to leave the small loading terminal, the virus is quickly spreading from person to person through bites as they turn on and attack one another, and it is up to stewardess Jenny (Mercedes Masöhn) to keep the survivors safe until the authorities outside let them leave. Some secrets are revealed, a whole bunch of people are killed, and we have a film.

Alright, so aside from the whole "disease spreads via bites, turns people into rabid killers" bit (which is a staple of just about every zombie movie ever made), there are two solid connections to the previous film in the series. One, a man is watching the news on his laptop and sees that an apartment complex in Los Angeles has been quarantined. Two, a secret is revealed that ties one of the characters to that apartment complex, and this was honestly a throwaway scene that seemed to have been inserted only to justify labeling this as a sequel. The filmmakers could have just as easily have said something about the South Pole instead of an apartment complex and called this a sequel to The Thing instead - that is how loose the connection is.

So, there's that out of the way... how did it fare as a standalone horror flick? Well, it honestly wasn't that great, but it wasn't horrible either. The main problem is that there's simply nothing fresh or original here: everything that we see in this storyline has been done time and time again over the years. Hell, does Flight of the Living Dead ring a bell? The film is content to follow the same formula that every other zombie flick follows: outbreak occurs, attack, things calm down, attack, move from point A to point B, attack, reveal some things that shed some light on the virus, attack, grand finale, attack, happy ending, ten-second scene that leaves room for another sequel. The movie is as predictable as it gets, and that is never a good thing.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad if the movie had something else going for it. However, it doesn't. The scares are also formulaic, and any horror fan will see the jump scares (and there are a lot of jump scares) coming from a mile away. It's the same shit that we have seen from every horror flick for the last thirty years: the music will change just before it happens, or one of the characters will ask "Did you hear that?", or any of a number of other options that will safely lead into a roaring zombie running ninety miles an hour at the survivors. What ever happened to surprises in horror flicks?

There also isn't much in the way of gore or effects. Somebody will get bitten, they'll shed a little blood, that's it. The zombies are wearing red contact lenses and will have bulging veins, end of story. I can't say that the effects were bad, but considering that everything else about the film was average at best, it would have been nice to at least be able to say that, yeah, there are some amazing kills on display here. Sadly, there isn't.

Overall, Quarantine 2 is a forgettable film. It's not a bad film, but it's far from a great one and it will do little more than help you pass ninety minutes with your brain turned off. You'll know who lives and who dies during the first ten minutes, you'll know who the bad guy is from the first hint, and you'll see every scare coming long before it actually happens. The filmmakers chose to ditch the shaky-cam technique that the first film used, so that may work in its favor depending on which side of that particular fence you are on, but otherwise, the movie is nothing more than "alright." 5/10.

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