Audience and actors trapped together

Quarantine (MA15+) 2 stars National release JOHN Erick Dowdle's horror film Quarantine, is as shambolic as Twilight is elegant.

Jennifer Carpenter in in a scene from Quarantine

Quarantine (MA15+) 2 stars National release JOHN Erick Dowdle's horror film Quarantine, is as shambolic as Twilight is elegant.

It has an excuse to be so: like The Blair Witch Project (a film that has a lot to answer for) and Cloverfield, the concept here is that everything we see was shot by a video camera. The camera in question is operated by the understandably little-seen Scott (Steve Harris), who is working with Los Angeles television news journalist Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) on what is at first a very routine story: a night at a suburban fire station.

After interminable scenes in which the perky Angela flirts shamelessly with a couple of the more handsome firemen, she, Scott and his camera head out on an emergency call, which turns into a nightmare beyond their wildest imagination.

In an old apartment building, something is very wrong: an old woman has been biting people. No sooner have the two firefighters, the TV crew and a couple of policeman entered the hallway than the authorities shut down the place; no one is allowed to enter or leave, which is pretty tough because gradually more and more rabid flesh-eaters emerge from the apartments to attack the unfortunate and increasingly terrified people trapped in the place.

Quarantine is not at all original; it's almost a shot-for-shot remake of a Spanish film, Rec (2007), by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, but the original, which played at some film festivals, was marginally more coherent.

As the film progresses and the nightmare situation gets more and more out of control, the camerawork (actually by Ken Seng) becomes nauseatingly unwatchable. We take it on trust, I suppose, that even when threatened by rabies-infected zombies, Scott will keep on filming, though (as with Cloverfield) it's a conceit that's a bit hard to swallow; no wonder the poor guy couldn't keep the camera still.

But on top of that, everything's so murky and underlit that it's a struggle to see what on earth's going on. For some audiences that will be part of the fun, and the film is undeniably creepy; but anyone prone to vertigo, be warned. The camerawork is more threatening than the fictional monsters.