Jennifer Carpenter: Actually a decent Scream Queen – who knew?

Say, here’s a movie that took me completely by surprise: Quarantine. I remember seeing the previews for this last year and loudly dismissing it as total crap. But back then, I mistakenly thought it was some kind of extension of the Saw franchise. Still, even at the beginning of our On Demand purchase, I was skeptical – is that The Schaech I see? With a bad mustache? Why yes, yes it is. Man, that guy gets around the bad B-movies (or so I thought).

But almost as soon as the hot guy (Jay Hernandez, of course), the douchebag (Schaech) and our intrepid reporter (Carpenter) get locked in a creepy old apartment building with a cast of other character actors, things get interesting. And by interesting, I mean zombies. And by zombies, I mean enough splatter, exposed bones, brains and other grossness to keep me more than happy. Seriously – I don’t know who this John Erik Dowdle character is, but I’m paying attention now. You did Romero proud, son.

Of course, I have no idea how much of this brilliance is due to [REC], the Spanish film on which this was based on, but at the very least: good job on translating something without ruining it. I thought I’d at least be disappointed in Carpenter, as her character on Dexter bugs – but nope. She’s got a set of lungs on her, and definitely knows how to act terrified.

And – I don’t want to spoil anything but: BEST ENDING. EVER.