PROM NIGHT

This movie came out in 2008 and I remember it initially catching my interest just from the way it was advertised and the look of slutty teen slasher that it had written all over it, ya'll know I'm a sucker for that shiet. And honestly, whoever is reading this you might decide to stop reading my blogs all together after this sentence but - I didn't mind it. No really, this isn't me joking here, it might just have been the mood I was in last night but holy wow, it took me by surprise! Please don't lose your faith in me, I know overall it's a shitty movie, but for the most part (for me) it did a lot of the right things! You know, the things that make it (again, for me) slightly good shitty, instead of hideously bad shitty. (I apologize for that horribly poor sentencing) - anyway, spoilers! Kind of. Nothing big.

It's pretty much a 'what you see is what you get' kind of film, and I dig it. In the town of Bridgeport a deranged high school teacher Richard Fenton becomes unhealthily obsessed with miss teen queen Donna Keppel. He murders her family to be with her (slightly original, gotta give 'em that), and is consequently arrested and sent to prison for life. And this is all before the movie actually starts! Three years later, Donna Reed is doing better, living with her Aunt and Uncle and has a hot new boyfriend as well as a couple, obligatory hot girlfriends, but is still having to take crazy pills in order to deal with the horrors of her past. Honestly, I love when they bring the pretty people down a peg. She is so obviously flawed by the incident of her family's murder, she is no longer miss teen queen and things are still looking bright, regardless of her previous hang ups. She's one of those characters who let her hang ups define her in a positive way, and I always like to see that, although you might find me silly for reading that much into a very shallow leveled slasherfest. On the long awaited prom night (which takes place a mere 30 minutes into the movie, sometimes I really love when they just jump right into things) she goes with her boyfriend Bobby and two couples of friends to the Pacific Grad Hotel where they naturally book a hotel suite for doing the dirty after. But psychopath Richard has escaped from prison and has found himself on the same floor of the hotel as them, thus ensues a gloriously predictable killing spree to Donna, stabbing any and all of her friends and staff of the hotel that cross his path.

The movie did have some pretty stupid parts but overall I really enjoy a film that surrounds glamorous teens getting senselessly killed off (Black Christmas, House on Sorority Row, Friday the 13th, April Fool's Day..) and that's pretty much what this movie was, just a newer and lesser quality version. There was no substance, but it didn't bug, and it actually reminded me a bit of the the 1980 film goodie He Knows You're Alone. Not a real favorite of mine but something everyone should see at least once! The killer in Prom Night is what jogged my memory. Same kind of creepy narrow face, and for the most part that's really all you see of him is his face except for the few and far between placed full body screen shots, and for me that just makes it more terrifying! Especially that scene where he's in the closet but it's so dark the guy can't see until his face just suddenly materializes out of nowhere, that was fan-fucking-tastic! Also I thought the hat the killer wore was a nice touch, added to his overall menacing demeanor. All the kills happened very fast and very well placed, I was honestly scared in some parts, and I like that they made the guy not just a crazy but a really smart crazy. Getting out of there by offing one of the cops and taking the uniform, good stuff! I was, as always, really sad to see the boyfriend die in the end even though I KNEW it was going to happen 'cos the stupid bitch left the room on the whim of a stupid dream. Stupid bitch. No actually I liked her, I liked all the actors actually! All no-names, so it has a really authentic vibe to it. You really just see a bunch of attractive, horny teens at the prom gettin' down and gettin' killed in a true classic teen slasher way. It's a real mindless pleaser!

Apparently there is a 1980 version of Prom Night that revolves around a foursome of bitchy popular chicks who have kept a secret since childhood about how they taunted a girl to the point of her falling out a window and now someone who witnessed that murder has come to their prom night to exact their revenge on the teens. Don't know if this film is directly related to that in any other way besides revolving around a prom night, but I definitely want to see this older one! The 80's always get it right, ya'll.

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

It's been a long time since I've felt so utterly betrayed by a movie. Don't get me wrong, Halloween II hurt me bad, but I had at least the faintest idea that it could go wrong. This movie, however? Allowed me to hope and then knocked me out from under my feet! Dramatic, I know, but you can see that's just how much it killed my spirit. If you knew me you'd know just how much I crave a really good ghost story! Hard to come by and as kids my friend Jill and I were such fans of screaming along to the Poltergeist movies 1 through a billion. 2001's Nicole Kidman flick The Others was an unexpected one, but good. Other movies that I have also had a soft spot for involving the haunting of peeps include (of course) The Shining, The Sixth Sense, even that slightly cheesy Harrison Ford/Michelle Pfeifer flick What Lies Beneath. Being haunted by the husband's mistress who he killed?! "I think she's startin' to suspect something..." "Who?" "YOUR WIFE." Such quality. But since these films I have not been captured by another movie in the same way, which is a real shame. Ghosts are fucking creepy, man! Why is it that so many people just can't get it right?

ENDING SPOILERS, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

The movie begins when Virginia Madsen (awesome lady from Candyman, an obscure favorite of mine), the mother of a son sick with cancer moves her whole family to a house in Connecticut (cue genius movie title applause here) closer to where he gets his treatments from. Now there is always a catch when a story revolves around the family moving into a creepy old house, and once thing I do love about all movies with that kind of plot is that it's always something different. This time around, the house used to be a freaking funeral home! Good stuff, at least in theory. As to be expected with most ghost stories, creepy things start to happen almost immediately! Although for me, after the first out of nowhere cheap scare, I was less than impressed. The ghost boy body carvings were definitely of the creepy, and some other visual effects were pretty neat, but overall I was very disappointed with the way everything looked. It's like they took all these images that could have been really disturbing and made them- well, way less disturbing. Lame! The whole ectoplasm thing was such a let down, that was what was most advertised before the film came out and it looked more like just a bunch of disgusting goo than anything remotely scary and other worldly.

I also didn't expect it to be so religiously influenced too, that can work sometimes depending on the movie but the whole seance/exorcism bullshit was a tad much. If it fits in with the whole landscape and general feel of the film it's cool but for me it seemed very out of place the entire time. I kept being reminded of a lesser cool version of the Skeleton Key, now THAT was a movie that made it work and by the way, that film freaking rocked by socks off. What made this movie especially awful for me is that even the cheap scares didn't work on me, which never happens, but they were so cheap that I found the off key trumpet blares and poorly placed scares more humorous than anything else (however at least I can rhyme). Essentially after about 30 minutes the entire film was a snoozfest for me, as in, I actually fell asleep and had to rewind it later. The ending made it completely not worth it to me to even put that much effort into it but alas, can't rewind time. Essentially Matt (cancer boy) has a vision that the main ghost boy Jonah who was killed by the spirits after the seance (laaaammee) was the one who used his abilities as a medium to burn the other guests alive (revenge is a bitch, never forget that and NEVER piss off a ghost duh idiots) so Matt rushes home to solve the mystery and save his family. He smashes the walls of the living room to reveal a bunch of embalmed corpses which was visually only OK, then sets the house on fire and that's that, end of story. Of course Matt's cancer goes into complete remission and the house is rebuilt and resold, no further incidents reported (except that I keep hearing there might be sequel so who knows how good their word is on COMPLETELY NORMAL HOUSE NOW WE SWEARS IT.

Apparently this film did really well, so good for them, I just wish more had been done to make this all more believable and enjoyable for me. Perhaps I'm among the minority though, who knows. I really like Kyle Gallner as an actor so I really hope I see him in more stuff, he's got a great look for the horror genre!

Drag Me To Hell [spoilers, duh]

Drag Me to Hell, written and directed by Sam Raimi (who also directed Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, The Quick and the Dead and Spiderman), was in a word... INCREDIBLE! I expected none of it, and had no idea that it was exactly what I was looking for when I paid my $10 for the experience. Love at first sight, that movie was for me.

Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown who is a promotion hungry woman working for a bank and is positively jonesin' for the newly open position of assistant manager. Then there's the new hire Stu Rubin who is a complete kiss ass, the guy everyone hates in a work place, and continuously gets in the way of Christine's promotion. When an old gypsy woman Mrs. Ganush has been evicted by the bank and requests a third extension of her mortgage, Christine's boss tells her that it's her call and in the interest of finally getting her promotion Christine denies the loan to prove to her boss that she can make tough decisions. Mrs. Ganush begs for the loan but Christine calls security and the gypsy woman goes crazy! Later that night Christine is stalked by Mrs. Ganush in the parking lot and they duke it out which turns out to be an absolutely FANTASTIC struggle. After much beating, tossing, glass breaking and putting the car in reverse a bunch of times, Mrs. Ganush rips off a button from Christine's coat and puts a gypsy curse on it! Then she throws the button back at her and vanishes. Fast forward to much later and while with her psychologist BF Clay , they pass by a fortune teller and Christine of course decides to consult with him. The fortune teller advises Christine that she has Lamia, the Black Goat, upon her. When Christine begins to be haunted by the dark spirit during the night at her home, she tries to fix the situation by releasing the loan to Mrs. Ganush, and thus the 'terror' really begins!

I put terror in quotes because really, most of the movie was not very scary except for the few audio cued points that made you jump out of your seat. But I dug it! I loved the way the demon lamia was shown through shadows until the end, and his goat-like design was surprisingly creepy, I will never look at those animals the same way again! There is an insane amount of blood (Christine's nose bleeding sequences are amazingly gross and hilarious, gore can be laughed at too!) and vomit (the scene of Gaunush's wake when the old lady's dead body falls on top of Christine and vomits 5 or 6 times is a tad much), but somehow it seems to work for this film, and comes off very funny. It was really great how Christine seemed to become crazier and crazier to everybody else as the films goes on, 'cos naturally the demon llama makes her hear things and she freaks out. I would NEVER kill my own kitten to escape a demon but then again... that gem of a scene where she's asked about her cat (post-kitten murder) at dinner with her boyfriend's parents is just classic and wouldn't have been there otherwise. The way she so poorly feigned her cluelessness when asked if something happened, her feeble statement "well... you know how cats can be..." was almost too much to bear, it was at that point that I fell completely in love with this film.

Now, the movie was not without flaws. First off, almost every character seemed to be utterly helpless, even the characters that were supposed 'experts' of such gypsy cursing situations. The whole sequence of bringing the demon forth into the goat was ridiculous, who gets outsmarted by a demon goat tied to a table?! That bugged. And also, I'd just like to point out that if my entire mortal existence depended on this one button, I would freaking double check that shit to make sure that it was indeed in the envelope, instead of some coin! It was really interesting watching her moral struggle over giving that 'button' away to doom someone else's fate but, well, once it was revealed that it was just a coin, it all seemed fruitless. Also, it was very predictable that she would end up with the button, but not in a bad way, I actually enjoyed that it ended the way i predicted, even though I was sad to see her and Justin Long part ways for all eternity. If you think about it, her fate was REALLY undeserving. She didn't do anything wrong! The gypsy hag failed to pay her mortgage TWICE and it was obvious that her family was not exactly in the poor house considering the roof over their heads and the big party/wake they threw for her after her death. So really, Christine got the very VERY short end of the stick, but the actress was phenomenal and I loved every second of her on screen doing her thang.

Sam Raimi made what I would call a horror themed comedy, which I have always always ALWAYS loved. Not at all on the level of his previous horror related films like the notorious Evil Dead, but I had no qualms with this film except for its sometimes extreme level of grossness. I went into the film hoping to be scared shitless but actually ended up quite happy with the way I simply cringed and laughed through the whole thing. Overall the movie was very silly and while that doesn't always work for wanna be horror films, for me, it worked for this one completely.

[Rec] 2007 (spoiler alert! spoiler alert!)

Essentially, there is not much to blog about with this movie, considering it was almost IDENTICAL to its later counterpart, Quarantine. I'm not mad about it, I had fun watching it anyway, however it's probably the first time ever that I've liked a remake rather than an original. I'm not sure what it was, maybe I was just TOO liquored up for the experience, or maybe it just didn't take hold of me the same way that Quarantine did.

Like I said, almost identical, however the differences mostly lay in the substance of the films. As in, Rec did not have much in the way of substance, for me. Not the same kind of unnecessary but entertaining character development present that I liked in the movie Quarantine, and no one really payed attention to the man behind the camera (can be read in a deep booming voice if you'd like, if not it's cool), and well... actually you can just look here for all my thoughts on the newer film.

I think my feelings partially had to do with the fact that I saw Quarantine first, and was therefore inevitably disappointed that the original was so very much the same. I'm one of those people that really likes to see a lot of difference between original and remake, but by no means am I knocking on the original! It was still great, and I guess considering Quarantine was inspired by Rec, I couldn't have expected to be blown away, they were bound to be similar. There were great things about both movies, and one thing I really did like about Rec was the ending. So awesomely old school! The mad scientist of sorts, locked away in the attic performing EXPERIMENTS and shit on this 'possessed' girl. Of course it all goes wrong and he ends up dead, and she of course spreads the zombie virus to the rest of the building. That was so the greatest part of Rec, the very end when with only the camera's green light they see a long haired, unfed zombie girl (who incidentally reminded me of the ring girl, if she were a zombie) swaying unsteadily around the attic... so creepy!!! If you're a zombie movie fan, you will find it hard to hate either of these movies.

Back from the dead - Halloween Fest 2009

So I have been MIA for the past... five months. Real life and completing my undergrad got in the way, darn them, but now I am back and ready to continue the blogging! Figured I'd kick this off with a post regarding the most recent horror flick out in theaters, Rob Zombie's Halloween II. (Ending spoilers, you've been warned)

Now, I have always been a fan of the Halloween movie franchise, Michael Meyers has continuously been my number one in my top three favorite serial killers (the other two being the Ghost from Scream and Freddy Krugar, of course) for years, and while the first Rob Zombie remake was not perfect I did not have much to complain about. I dug Zombie's take on Michael, the eight foot tall ex-wrestler was just too metal for words! And Michael's child hood back story was (for me) a die hard Halloween fan's wet dream. Learning about his past didn't make him LESS scary, in fact, seeing that even as a kid he had that soulless nature of a killer just made it all the more terrifying. However Zombie's choices regarding the direction of Michael and the actress playing Laurie Strode bugged the f*** out of me from the start, and that did not go away with this second installment. Not to mention that overall the movie was just moderately irritating from start to finish, from the kills to the low life characters to the way the film just seemed to DRAG itself through to the finish line. I remember hearing a year ago that Zombie didn't even want to do the second one... well, I now share his feelings on the matter.

Upon Michael first coming onto the screen I was immediately not a fan of his HUGE ASS BEARD, coupled with the fact that every time he stabs someone he makes this almost laughable grunting noise. Call me a purist, but I much prefer the Michael Meyers from the original films that never uttered a sound and the only time you ever see his face is for 1.5 seconds when his mask gets knocked off. This Michael was far too... human. And isn't the scariest thing about Michael Meyers supposed to be that he is so far removed from humanity that no one can possibly relate to his muted sociopath ways??? At least, that's what it always was for me, I'm only one person so perhaps I alone cherish these character traits in the original Michael Meyers.

Also, unlike some, I have always enjoyed Rob Zombie films and his style of film making. I loved House of a 1000 Corpses from the very opening sequence, and I have never had a problem with the way he always seemed to 'do too much' in his movies, 'tis what I liked most about them! HOWEVER. Maybe I'm just far too sensitive (unlikely) but it seemed to me that in this film? Rob Zombie was doing way too much when he ALREADY does too much. If that makes any sense, if you can wade through that psycho girl babble.... well if you don't get it, it makes perfect sense to me, so case in point. The amount of blood and gore seemed far more pointless than usual, and unusually upsetting, I felt no kind of anticipation or thrill with each kill, I just felt SAD for all the helpless victims that had the misfortune of coming into Laurie Strode's life and being killed for it. Also, most of the kills were just plain cheap, there was no obvious thought involved in it. The impression I always got from Michael Meyers was the strong, silent type, and underneath, a very cunning, calculating killer. Again, something that had always made him absolutely terrifying to me, but in this movie I just felt a serious lack of effort on his part. So disappointing. Was Michael Meyers just going through the motions?

I also must point out that while Laurie was mildly annoying in the first remake, she graduated to full on crazy bitch who just need to be put DOWN in the second remake. Dear god. How can one person just be a complete hysterical screaming and crying mess like that all day/night long??? I found myself gripping the arm of the chair next to me until my knuckles turned white - not out of fear! Out of shear, murderous annoyance. I'm pretty sure I started making verbal threats to my friend next to me that if Michael didn't finish the job than I would! And it probably would have made for a better movie, I've always been good at playing the more sinister roles... I kicked ass in the third grade production of Cinderella as the evil step mother, and don'tchoo forget it! Anyway. Yeah, she just royally pissed me off. And while I liked the angle that Rob took on Laurie, turning her into a wanna be gothic chic baddass post-her first Michael Meyers experience, I think I would have liked it more if it was a different actress. But then, maybe I'm just once again being too picky. I think there's some truth to the notion that there will just never be a Laurie Strode as great as Jamie Lee Curtiss (long live). Scout Taylor-Compton is just too whiny and hysterical for my taste, I like my women strong, like amazons.

Overall, I did not like the movie one little bit, though I did find appreciation in the things that I know I would have really liked had I liked the film at all (psycho girl babble again, sorry!). I think the only time I actually liked Laurie was at the end, when the girl finally went crazy. Really good stuff! Loved the classic Halloween music blaring loudly as Laurie leered at the camera, her mouth ever so slowly stretching into a V. creepy smile... And as much of a fan as I am of Sheri Moon Zombie, she will always be Baby from House of 1000 Corpses to me, and I think this time around as Michael's mothers ghost just didn't do it for me. Her continuous appearances throughout the movie just became more and more hokey than anything else. Then again, I have to be fair and admit that it has been quite awhile since I've seen the original second. Perhaps I'm being too critical. Then again... maybe not. For me personally, in this second remake installment? I was more afraid of Laurie the crazy and Michael's beard than anything else.

House of Wax circa 2005 (ending spoilers!)

I decided to take a break from the more, shall we say, sophisticated movies in the genre and take a minute to gush about a pretty shitty movie love of mine. I have not seen the original 1953 House of Wax and I definitely plan to, I'm sure it's much better, however I gotta admit there are some things I really love about the 2005 gem!

First of all, the beginning. Ohhh, the beginning! We are brought into the movie with a scene from the past, sometime in the 1970's I believe. We see a woman boiling hot wax and a cute little kid eating his breakfast and then suddenly the spawn of satan (or so they would have us believe) is brought into the room and strapped down into a high chair, kicking and screaming in a very violent fashion, end scene. What an introduction! Just enough to make us go, what the hell is going to become of these kids? Obvs they are going to grow up to become the antagonists. Flash forward to the present and we've got six young and horny teenagers on their way to a football game. First of all, the characters are fantastically cliche! But not in an annoying way. We've got the brainy, slightly pretentious final girl and her sweet but slightly dim witted boyfriend Wade (Wade? Seriously.). We've got the slutty blonde played by Paris Hilton which totally rocked my socks, and her playa boyfriend who may or may not have impregnated her. We never actually get a definite yes or no, but that's ok it seemed pretty obvious from the road head going on at the beginning of the movie that they've been gettin' down (haaa). Aaaand we've also got some idiotic random, and final girl's twin brother Nick who's totally hard 'n shit but he's squinty eyed Chad Michael Murray so it's hard to take his street cred seriously. It's made apparent very early on that Carly is the 'good twin' and Nick is the 'bad twin', which they cleverly foreshadowed in some weird way in the opening scene.

We have the first notion that something is not right with the area they're in when they decide to set up camp for the night and a mysterious truck pulls up to their camp site with its brights shining in their faces, only to peal off in the other direction when Nick the bad ass throws something heavy at the headlights, breaking one. The next morning it is discovered that their cars fan belt has been cut (PAY BACKSA BITCH SUCKKAAAA!) and Carly falls down a huge ditch full of roadkill (nice one, slick) with a seemingly human hand sticking out from the middle of it. A very dirty and slightly off putting individual with more than a few missing teeth that makes us think, killllerrrrrr?? Well he shows up with a dead deer that he adds to the pile (is this some kind of weird hobby he's got?) and offers peeps a lift to the nearest town and Carly + loyal BF warily accept. And this is the point in the movie when all the weird, creepy but seemingly harmless small town hick shit starts to get serious! The first real indicator would definitely be the very ghost-like town in that there's NOBODY THERE. We think all the shit is gonna go down at the House of Wax museum when actually, shit starts happening all over the place, it's great. Bo the mechanic guy has to take them up to his house to get the proper fanbelt because of COURSE he doesn't have it in his store, and on the drive up he does the obligatory telling the strangers about the weird, fucked up family that used to own the place, it's so necessary to a good cheesy horror film and I love it.

Appaaaarently, Sinclair and his wife moved to this lil 'ole town when he was fired from his former job for performing experiments on patients. Perhaps there was wax involved??? Anyway, his wifey while living there developed quite a passion for sculpting with wax, thus the wax museum was born! Eventually she died and totally wracked with grief the male Sinclair committed suicide and the two children are left parent-less. GREAT way to introduce these villainous fiends! Kind of original, but just unoriginal enough that you get a kick out of the cliche-ness of it all (which basically sums up how I feel about this entire movie by the way). This movie was really gruesome but in a total bearable way, at least in my opinion. Just enough to get some real shock value out of it but I wasn't actually grossed out to the point of leaving the room or puking my guts out or anything. Although that scene where dumbass is tearing off Wade's face skin is kind of repulsive... and the chick's finger sticking through the grate. UUUGGGGHHHH. I can't even think about it! I did think that Carly was a strange breed of final girl. I guess I'm just partial to the ones that you know, are smart and make smart decisions throughout the whole movie, those that generally show a real survivors instinct. I was getting frustrated with her all the way up until the end when she FINALLY takes up that bat and kicks some serious shit out of crazy brother #1! That was pretty sick.

I'd just like to point out also that I am so fond of the whole, horror movies past the 1990's use really angsty hard rock to get their point across. With the Saw movies they had Mudvayne in the credits, with this one they had crazy brother #1 turn on Marilyn Manson whilst carrying Carly over the shoulder like a sack of potatoes down to the basement where tha reeaalll freaky shit goes down. The whole ending I am just a huge fan of as well, if nothing else I couldn't hate this movie just for that. The entire wax museum melting down around them, Carly trying to reach out to crazy deformed brother #2 and for a minute you think they're going to do the whole cheesy, deranged mental case sees the light thing, BUT NO he's still crazy and wants to murder you. Gooood stuff. And, ok. The very last scene takes the cake. "Ran the Sinclair family through CDIC. Trudy and the doctor didn't have two sons. They had three. " DUN DUN duuuuuuuuun! Truly a cliche classic genius. And the two survivors are being hauled away in the ambulance, look out the window, and see the creep from the road kill pit sitting on the back of his truck, petting his pup and waving. SO. GREAT.

Quarantine (2008)

I had my reservations about seeing this movie but I finally made the trek down to our local Blockbuster two days ago and rented it, and boy am I glad I did! I really liked it, I have always been a fan of the man behind the camera sort of film, ever since Blair Witch came out in the '90's... however I didn't see Cloverfield, so really Blair Witch was the only experience I'd ever had in that area. But whatever. I liked its style, end of story. Apparently Quarantine is a remake of a 2007 movie called [Rec], little known fact. Haven't seen that one, but apparently it is actually favored over the newer version so I think I will be checking it out soon.

The basic idea of Quarantine goes like this - television reporter Angela Sassy Pants and her token cameraman are doing a story during the night shift with LA's finest fire fighters. After many an awkwardly placed innuendo between Angela and nameless fire fighter with or without a mustache, a 911 call takes all the fire fighters in da house plus Angela and cameraman to an apartment building that from the outside seems... well, like there's no real emergency. What eventually comes out is that some little old biddy living in the building has been infected by something "unknown" (unknown? Seriously, my first thought in a zombie movie is always- do you people never watch movies? Or is the main idea behind all zombie films that zombie cinema doesn't exist within their reality? 'Cos it really bugs). /end mini rant

So after a few residents within the building are brutally attacked (yeah, it takes them that long to start figuring things out, real geniuses we're working with here. Even in the absence of zombie knowledge, you'd think upon seeing someone take a chunk out of someone else's neck, you'd get the idea that maybe something has gone terribly wrong), they try and escape only to find that the CDC has quarantined (hmmm, clever!) the building. Everything goes positively haywire after that naturally, people start biting each other left and right and eventually the power to the building is cut, leaving the survivors in total darkness, with only the glowey green light of the camera's night vision option to guide them. Overall I really liked this movie! Everything was pretty much very predictable but in a fun way, like you were excited to be able to call what was gonna happen next but somehow you were still wracked with nerves and maybe even jumped a little when the time came. I thought the dialogue was very campy and it was neat that they actually gave the man behind the camera a role. He wasn't just the man behind the camera, they were constantly letting us know that there was a person behind the lens and we even got to see him on the other side a few times.

The whole ambiance of the movie was especially intensified for me because I was watching it with liquor and a friend, so we had the whole clutching to each other and screeching in hushed voices things like "Why the fuck are they still walking toward her?!" and "How the hell do they still not get what's going on here? OMIGOD LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!" thing going on. It was great fun. I do have a couple bones to pick, not really bagging on the movie, just general things I always ask myself in zombie films... One, why are people stupid and don't recognize the sights and sounds of imminent danger? Especially in Quarantine, we got peeps friggin' foaming at the mouth and emitting a very distinct growl mixed with a wheeze sort of thing that seriously only the UNDEAD could really produce. Seriously. How do people not see those warning signs?? Not to mention they're showing very cannibalistic tendencies. And yet, it takes these guys at least three 'rabid' humans before they realize, maybe taking them into the common area where everybody else is and simply tying them up ISN'T the best idea. And two, whyyy do they always gotta jump to rabies? I know it's the easiest explanation in the apparent absence of not knowing what the fuck a zombie is but seriously, I don't think humans that are infected with rabies just start eating each other. It's just not right. The entire movie was very reminiscent of Blair Witch for me which I obviously really enjoyed, especially the ending. There is nothing better than 20-30 seconds of shaky camera action and intense suspense. I loved every second of it!