So in the original ‘Quarantine’… I guess I can call it ‘original’ though it’s a remake… but anyway, in the first movie, if you remember, there was some weird virus running through an apartment building turning people into The Crazies.  Eventually the building had to be locked down.  Nobody in, nobody out.  They might’ve nuked it, I can’t remember ‘cause that was like eons ago.  What you might not have known is that while that was going on, a plane was about to leave LAX on its way to Kansas City.  Why is this relevant?  Because it’s looking like The Crazy Juice just got on this plane and now we have ‘Quarantine 2: The Terminal’. 

Jenny (Mercedes Masohn) and Paula (Bre Blair) are a couple of air waitresses prepping to pass out some honey roasted nuts on Flight 1412 while we meet the spartan crew of passengers they will serving.  In particular there’s Henry the Kindergarten Teacher (Josh Cooke) who has brought some hamsters on the plane to take back to his class, there’s Willsy the Co-Pilot (Andrew Benator) who is sneezing and looks to be infected with something already, there’s Shilah the hot Army Medic (Noree Victoria) who has skills which will be very handy in a little while, there’s George the bratty teen (Matthew Liptak) who will serve as Sherlock Holmes on our flight and finally there’s Ralph the Fat Guy (George Back) who will find himself bitten by one of these hamsters while trying to be helpful.  Ralph brought some kind of seatbelt extension with him on the plane, and as I look down at my waistline, growing like European Unemployment, I may have to ask him where he purchased this.  There are more members on the flight but we’ll concern ourselves with these guys for now.

Soon Ralph the Fat Guy starts foaming at the mouth which is bad.  Soon Ralph goes berserk which is worse.  Finally Ralph bites somebody’s face nearly clean off which means infection time is on.  The plane is forced to land but this airport is none too interested in letting a plane from Los Angeles, considering what they are watching on the news right now at that apartment complex, unload its passengers.  They convinced Ed the Helpful Ground Crew Attendant (Ignacio Serricchio) to let them get off the plane, because Paula really needs some medical help, and all seems okay.  Ralph is still going berserk, but the pilots are holding him off in the bathroom.

So our crew makes it to the terminal, thus the movie’s title, and they will not be allowed to leave this terminal under the threat of death via automatic weapon, as the airport is on lockdown.  Then after a quick trip back to plane to get the medics supplies, seems Ralph has gotten loose, folks are missing and blood is everywhere.  Not good. 

And it will only get progressively worse as folks get infected, get super fast, get super strong, and get super crazy.  Survival is the name of the game but also the question as to which one of our passengers brought the virus on board and why.  The answer will SHOCK you!  Or not. 

Directed by John Pogue, we liked ‘Quarantine 2: The Terminal’.  We liked this one even more than the first ‘Quarantine’ even though this movie was far more conventional in its presentation.  While I thought the first movie was effective, the shaky camera, POV device and poor lighting started to grate on a nerve after a while so the fact this movie pushed that to the side and pursued its own story arc free of the Spanish ‘[REC]’ films didn’t upset me. 

At its core it’s just a zombie movie.  The pitch probably went something like ‘It’s 28 Days Later meets Die Hard 2’, but while admittedly the concept behind ‘Quarantine 2’ might not be the freshest apple in the cart, it is at least effective and economical.  Pogue, working off of his own screenplay, doesn’t waste a lot of time on superfluous nonsense, the film moves pretty swiftly from terror set piece to terror set piece, slowing down long enough to generate some genuine tension and a bit of palpable of fear, at least for those who can still feel fear from a horror movie.  Because of the economy in moving things along there’s not a lot in the way of character development or anything like that, but considering I wasn’t all that interested in getting know most of these characters any better anyway, that didn’t upset me either.

There was a nice bit of gore for those of you out there who like that kind of thing, the acting performances weren’t anything that made you say ‘whoa… girlfriend really captured the essence of a pregnant zombie’, but at least they didn’t get in the way, and the reasons for the ‘why’ did make sense… albeit this too wasn’t the freshest apple in the cart.

So while it looks like we might have some slightly spoiled apples in our apple cart in regards to ‘Quarantine 2: The Terminal’, au contraire mon frère, we just have old apples in the cart a little past their due date.  That just means they probably still taste good, but they’re cheaper.  And riskier.  ‘Quarantine 2’ was a risky treat that didn’t taste all that bad, all things considered.