Review: Quarantine 2: Terminal - 2011

Quarantine 2: Terminal
Director: John Pogue
2011
Horror

A flight from L.A. is forced to do an emergency landing when one of the passengers starts to attack the others. When they finally reach the ground there seems to by no help available. They search for a free gate where they expect to find medical personal. But nothing happens. All entries to the terminal are locked. What’s going on? Soon they realize that the entire building is surrounded and quarantined. A virus turn one by one of the passengers and flight personal into blood thirsty zombies and the outside world are not about to set them free. They take no risks with the deadly virus!

This starts as an intriguing sequel! And even if the first film – Quarantine, was more or less the same movie as the Spanish original [REC] this is a more stand-on-it’s-own sequel and has nothing in common with [REC2]. Some of the original essence has been lost since this film doesn’t contain any of the handhold subjective shaky camera what so ever. It’s referenced to but the imagery is not used. Perhaps they’re saving that for part 3?

The fact that it has nothing to do with the original sequel and not with the first Quarantine either really, gives the film a lift. It feels fresh and I can’t remember ever seeing a zombie attack on a plane before. Zombies on a Plane!

You could argue that the intro sequences are filled with clichés, but I think it’s charming and it’s not made by mistake. It’s almost as if the creators mock themselves, or perhaps the audience. It’s not obvious where the virus will come from and who that’ll get it first, just that it will come! There are plenty of re herrings and the final eruption of aggravation is pretty good.

Like the other movies this is about super fast infected individuals rather than real zombies. At least if you take the old school of slow zombies into the equation. Some say that the only true zombies are just like that, slow and horrifying and craving human flesh. The latter is the case here though, they bite and there’s blood! But it doesn’t follow through all the way and after the emergency landing the film turn more conventional and reminds you more of the other films in the series. It would have been fun have the entire plot take place in the air but I guess that would have been a hard scenario to accomplish.

The part on the ground, which is the most of the movie, is slower paced than the beginning, but it never gets stale or boring. It’s very well acted and there is an explanation to everything in the end. I won’t tell what happens but if you’re after a happy ending you might want to see something else instead. I don’t think it’s a spoiler claiming that since most zombie flicks seems to have some kind of apocalyptic ending anyway. It’s kind of the essence of the genre, to lead the story into total and ultimate decadence.

All in all a very entertaining flick but surely not a masterpiece. If you like zombie films with virus infections you should like this one too and it’s not necessary to have the other films in the two series in fresh memory. This film can make it on its own, all you need to know is explained pretty clear.