QUARANTINE
(Review)


Being the Jaume Balaguero slut that I am, I really tried my darnedest to see [REC] when it was first unleashed, but that just didn’t happen. Then, I told myself that I’d see [REC] first before I would ever be unfaithful and lay eyes on its English-language remake, Quarantine.
Yeah.
That didn’t happen either.
And finally, it came about that I simply couldn’t keep putting off Quarantine in favour of its progenitor any longer, so, here I am, with my thoughts on Quarantine.


This very nearly breathless exercise in first-person, handheld POV horror sees Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott Percival (The Practice’s Steve Harris) doing a piece for The Night Shift, where Angela gets to live her dream for a night—being a fireman.
Well, actually just shadowing a crew of firefighters, first in the station, during their downtime, and later on, when they’re called in for what turns out to be a medical emergency with horrifying ramifications, gradually turning her dream, yes, you guessed it, into a nightmare…


Under the very able and deft direction of John Erick Dowdle (assisted by his brother Drew, who’ve made the example of the Coen brothers their own career template), the palpable tension of a collection of people trapped in a building under very intense conditions is only too evident, as events spiral out of control and hysteria steadily escalates into maddening terror.
And while this is a piece of ensemble horror, credit needs to go to Carpenter, who should be familiar to you from Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose, as well as Showtime’s Dexter. As Angela, she’s practically onscreen for the entire length of the film, and is the audience’s “in” to the chiller’s narrative, the gamut of emotions she runs—excitement to anger to indignation to anxiety to balls-out shivering hysteria—mirrors our own, as things rapidly go from bad to oh-so-very-frakking-worse.


Though this doesn’t have the Cloverfield advantage of a cast of relative unknowns (thus heightening the suspension of disbelief), we do get Johnathon Schaech as the 70’s porn-mustachioed fireman Fletch.
And that’s a pretty fair trade-off, I think.
It’s also a credit to everyone involved with Quarantine (including DP Ken Sang and editor Elliot Greenberg, for making the cinematic sleights of hand invisible) that the film’s scares outshine that mustache, ‘cause it truly is a scarifying one, people.
There’s also a very neat Doug Jones appearance in here; trust me, you’ll know Dougie when you see him…


It’s interesting to note that the Dowdles co-wrote the Quarantine script working off [REC]’s Spanish script, since the adaptation began while [REC] was still being completed.
It was in the same week that they completed and presented their Quarantine script that they first saw [REC], and though it did then inform the subsequent development and shooting of Quarantine, this didn’t tread the usual path most remakes take.
And now that Quarantine has proven to be a very effective film in its own right*, it only makes me even more eager, to see both the original [REC], and its impending sequel, [REC] 2, which is said to give the material an Aliens spin, as camera-mounted military types enter the picture to clean up the bloody mess.
Woo-hoo! Fun times!!


* It’s a testament to the achievements of the Dowdle brothers—whose tag-team work on The Poughkeepsie Tapes got them the Quarantine gig—that they were handpicked by M. Night Shyamalan to kick off the “Night Chronicles” with Devil.
The Night Chronicles will encompass three horror films that will find their genesis in original stories by Shyamalan, to be scripted and directed by individuals chosen by him as well.
Devil is to be scripted by Brian Nelson, who’s worked with director David Slade twice, helping to adapt 30 Days of Night for the big screen, and before that, on Hard Candy.


Parting shot: Incidentally, Quarantine—and of course, [REC]—plays like an early Cronenberg mash-up, taking the setting, an apartment building, from one of his films which I haven’t seen (Shivers), and releasing the threat from one of his films which I have seen, and which is reviewed here at the Iguana.
Other films’ reviews accessible in the Archive are shakycam POV horror titles that followed in [REC]’s wake, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield and George Romero’s Diary of the Dead; Jaume Balaguero’s features Los sin nombre, Darkness, and Frágiles; as well as films featuring Jones (Guillermo del Toro’s El laberinto del fauno and Hellboy II: The Golden Army) and Schaech (Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation).
Schaech’s work on cable TV’s Masters of Horror is also tackled in the Archive.

(Quarantine Spanish OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 12
‘The British Invasion’
Teleplay by Daniel Cerone; story by Melissa Rosenberg & Daniel Cerone
Directed by Steve Shill
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

So Erik King makes it to the season finale, only to get blown into teeny pieces by the arsonist titty vampire.
Lila breaks into the cabin to find Doakes, and when she asks who he is and why he’s locked up, she understands just exactly what that hunger and darkness is that she senses in Dex.
And since she believes she’s his soulmate, she does what she can to protect Dex: set the cabin on fire, flick open the propane tank, and leave.
Doakes manages to smash his way out of the cage, but just as he’s about to try and put out the fire (mouthing “Motherf*ck—“), the tank explodes, taking him and the cabin with it.

Meanwhile, Deb and hordes of Miami’s Finest are closing in on the area where the cabin is located, so Dex hurries to get there first, only to find the flaming wreck already crawling with cops.
In a gruesome bit, they find the partial remains of Doakes, and once positive ID’s been made, the case is officially closed.

There’s a great scene in LaGuerta’s office, as Lundy breaks the news to Maria, and she then goes through the rest of the episode being faithful to the memory of her former partner (and probably, lover).
Lauren Velez also has a fantastic scene with Jennifer Carpenter, when Deb makes the effort to reach out to LaGuerta; after all, they’re now in the same boat, two women who aren’t sure they can ever trust another man—and themselves—again, given that someone they thought they knew turned out to be a killer. (Of course, in LaGuerta’s case, that isn’t the truth at all, but let’s not tell her that…)

And while Angel is cleared by I.A. over the whole rape thing, there’s a nice little play on the show’s opening credits sequence, as it dawns on Dex that with Doakes framed and dead, he’s a free man. That whole time, I fully expected Lila to be lying in wait as Dex opens his door, but the b!tch had other plans.
After an early morning booty call with Rita, Dex’s jubilation comes to a screeching halt when Masuka tells him that the cabin’s explosion wasn’t accidental (Masuka seems to think Doakes committed suicide this way, rather than be caught by the police).
When Dex finds the SUV’s GPS thingie in the debris, he realizes Lila’s behind the miracle save, so he meets her at the aquarium. There, Dex makes her believe he still wants her, and convinces her that he’s leaving Miami and that he wants to take her with him.

But when he shows up at Lila’s place (with his bag of kill tools), Deb’s there too. And when Lila arrives to find the Morgans there, and with Deb being her usual vitriolic self, Lila twigs onto the fact that something’s not kosher. So she makes like Dex’s kill bag is hers and prances on outta there.
Dex calls her on her cell, making all the appropriate “Sorry” noises, but Lila doesn’t reply.
Instead, she goes on over to Rita’s and abducts the kids.
Dex realizes Lila’s game a little too late, and when he finds the kids missing, he tells Rita to call Deb.
Of course, Rita’s call finds Deb just about to hop into a cab to meet Lundy at the airport (Lundy’s off on another serial killer case), Deb intent on leaving everything in Miami behind for love of the Lundy. But the call from Rita puts Deb in a spot, and in the end, she ditches FBI lover boy to help Rita out.

Dex arrives at Lila’s to find the kids watching TV. Lila then says, “You could have had it all,” and sets the place on fire, as she locks Dex and the kids in.
Dex gets the kids out through a window, which he can’t fit through, and it looks like it’s over for Dex, but he smashes through the burning wall, and Deb arrives just in time to help him.
Dex is singed, but okay; the kids are fine; Rita’s understanding.

Then, it what seems to be an epilogue, we see Lila in Paris, and I’m thinking, Oh, no, what evil has Dexter Morgan wrought? Is Lila now some loony copycat killer?
I also thought, This is rather messy of Dex, leaving that loose end.
But my faith in my favourite blood spatter expert/serial killer is renewed as he pays Lila a visit and takes care of her. (It’s curious though and perhaps a tad hypocritical when Dex accuses Lila of murdering an innocent man; I mean, he was selling Doakes up the river, after all. How different would it have been if the cops had wound up capping Doakes’ a$$? Or if he’d wound up with a death sentence?)

The finale winds up with a montage as we see Deb and Angel getting commendations from the force, and Dex running with Rita and the kids in slow mo (we just lacked the friendly family dog, really).
During the voice over, Dex says that his relationships are no longer part of the mask; they’re something he needs now, and if that makes him vulnerable, so be it. Harry would disapprove, but as Dex claims, he’s no longer Harry’s disciple. He’s his own master now.
And as he places a new (and thus far empty) slide box in his secret AC hiding place, Dex says stuff about finding new rituals in his perpetual lot in life.
He ends by asking, “Am I evil? Am I good? I’m done asking those questions. I don’t have the answers.”
Then, as he shuts the AC while looking straight at us, his riveted audience, he asks, “Does anyone?”

Parting shot: My thoughts on the finale and Season 2 in a future installment of In-Between Seasons.

(Image courtesy of sho.com.)

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 4
‘See-Through’
Written by Scott Buck
Directed by Nick Gomez
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

It’s week 3 of the Bay Harbor Butcher investigation and Miami’s in the grip of the worst heat wave in recent memory. Oh, and Masuka’s just found something that could break the case wide open.
All that pressure gets Dex rattled enough to meet Lila on his lunch break, hoping she can do the sponsor thing and get him calm and centered. She doesn’t really help, though Dex does discover she works with “found art” (though in Lila’s case, it’s more like stolen), with pieces in her studio that are fairly disturbing, mannequins apparently eating each other and the like.
When Dex mentions to Rita that he may not be getting much help from Lila, Rita suggests that maybe Dex would be better off with an older, male sponsor, and Dex says he’ll consider it.
He eventually meets with Lila, and says the sponsorship is over.

Asking around about Masuka’s find, Dex finally gets the answer from Deb: algae found in the garbage bags. And when he gets to talk to Masuka, Dex finds out that a marine biologist is being brought in to examine the algae, which could tell them where the Butcher keeps his boat docked.
Dex doesn’t quite get it, but knows he has to do something about it. And a chance, throw-away comment by Angel tells Dex what he has to do: sabotage the freezered morgue so the bodies will quickly decompose in the heat, taking the algae with them.
He’s about to make some plans when Lila shows up at the station, asking for another chance. Lila insists there is no absolute good, and no absolute evil. Dex, wanting to just get her off his back, shows her the inside of the morgue.
Expecting her to be repulsed, Lila is instead fascinated by the corpse she is shown. When Dex asks her what she thinks of the Butcher, Lila says “whoever did this is just like you and me.” She goes on to say that everyone has both good and evil in them, making Dex realize that Lila, of all people, can see him, can see through the mask, and is apparently not revolted by what she sees.

Later that evening, Dex busts the cooling unit, making it look like it was carelessness on the garbage men’s part. The following morning, Lundy, Masuka, and the marine biologist arrive to find the bodies badly decomposed, the evidence compromised.
Dex is hopeful for the first time in weeks, when Masuka says it’s a good thing Lundy had the rocks kept apart from the bodies. Apparently, the algae was found on the rocks used to weigh down the garbage bags containing the bodies, rocks that are assumed to have been picked up in the area where the Butcher’s boat was docked. And the biologist’s taken the rocks and could have results soon.
So poor Dex could still be screwed.

Meanwhile, advise from Lundy gets Deb to chance an encounter with Gabriel (Dave Baez) from the gym, leading to some casual sex that Dex walks in on.
Another conversation with Lundy gets Deb to consider having a real relationship with Gabriel, and when they see each other in the gym again, and Gabriel suggests he wouldn’t mind hooking up once more, she suggests a real date instead. Gabriel agrees, and a date is set.

Meanwhile still, Pasquale (Jake 2.0’s Judith Scott) has a shirt from her fiancée that she wants analyzed, since she can smell another woman on it. She asks Dex first, but so as to help overload Masuka, he directs Pasquale to him. But when Masuka doesn’t give her the results she’s looking for, she has a meltdown in the middle of the station.
In the wake of this very public display, LaGuerta is put back in charge of Homicide.
Later on, in what is quite possibly the most shocking moment of the episode, we see LaGuerta in bed… with Pasquale’s fiancée! She then proceeds to dump his a$$. Now that she’s maneuvered Pasquale into a meltdown, she’s got what she needs: her job back.
Of course, it could not be as premeditated and cold-blooded as all that, but one must admit, that’s the way it looks.

Over on the Rita front, Cody (Preston Bailey) is having nightmares about the Bay Harbor Butcher, and Dex tries to assuage the little guy’s fears by telling him the Butcher only goes after bad guys and doesn’t go after kids. Still, Rita is incensed that this Butcher is giving her son nightmares and wishes only the worst to befall him.
Rita is also visited by her mother, Gail (Poltergeist’s JoBeth Williams; hurrah!!), who never really liked Paul, and has been at a distance for a long time. And though Gail casts her vote for the Butcher—who is, after all, cleaning up Miami’s streets—she tells Rita Dex is a very good actor, and that she senses he’s keeping a secret. (Hopefully, Rita will think it’s the drugs issue, though something tells me she’s going to assume it’s some sort of torrid affair with Lila…)

There are also subplots involving the investigation of a number of Butcher victims who don’t seem to have criminal records—in which Angel has to deal with a woman who claims her husband never killed anyone—and Doakes’ special ops past as a Ranger (though the latter seems an ill fit in the episode).
Despite that quibble though, this episode is a particularly good one, with developments in both Deb and LaGuerta’s lives (I mean, wow, I so bought into the whole LaGuerta standing up for a sister-in-the-force thing, but it looks like she’s really a stone-cold b!tch), while the Butcher investigation continues to get downright hairy for Dex.
And hey, I love Poltergeist and I love JoBeth Williams, the obvious chemistry between Williams and Craig T. Nelson a large part of what makes Poltergeist so special. I hope she hangs around Miami a while.

(Image courtesy of sho.com.)

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 3
‘An Inconvenient Lie’
Written by Melissa Rosenberg
Directed by Tony Goldwyn

Dexter’s at his first NA meeting and while others are sharing about their need for another pill and another hit, he’s going down his own shopping list of needs: duct tape, rope, etc. Anything to damp out the same repetitive, whiny story from junkie loser after junkie loser. All the while, he’s being eyed with interest by one particular female junkie (Jaime Murray, from TV’s Hustle and the upcoming The Deaths of Ian Stone), until he sneaks out a mere ten minutes after the meeting’s started.
But Rita rips him a new one when he gets to her place without his Newcomer Chip. So he promises to get one the following night.

Meanwhile, the Bay Harbor Butcher investigation goes into full swing, as Masuka is named LFI (Lead Forensics Investigator), and Deb and Angel are pulled into Lundy’s Task Force.
The department is then subsequently flooded by relatives and loved ones of missing persons, anxious to know if their husband/wife/son/daughter/lover/father/mother is one of the still unidentified victims.
Deb is assigned to interview the concerned relatives and staring this sort of desperate loss straight in the face initially proves too much for her, and she talks to Lundy to get her off the Task Force, claiming a backlog on her other cases. Lundy agrees to find her a replacement.
But when a day has passed and Lundy still hasn’t taken her off the Task Force (and she’s faced with a grieving mother looking for her little girl), Deb again confronts Lundy, saying she’s the last person who should be on the Task Force, as she was engaged to a serial killer and didn’t even know it.
Lundy says that’s exactly why he chose her for the Task Force, because she’s “seen into the heart and mind of a killer.” And because she got through it, and continues to get through it.
As a compromise, Lundy tells Deb to finish the interviews for the day, and if she still wants out, then he’ll find her a replacement.
Before the day is out though, Deb stumbles on what could be a pattern: two of the missing have criminal records. And when Deb puts the idea in front of Lundy, that maybe the Bay Harbor Butcher’s victims were “bad guys,” he tells her to check the remains against the criminal database.

When Dex returns to NA, he gets a Newcomer Chip, and shares, introducing himself as “Bob” and claims to be a heroin addict. The “one particular female junkie” who was eyeing him the previous night approaches him at the end of the meeting and takes him out for coffee.
Her name’s Lila and she calls him out on the bullsh!t he spewed at the meeting. As their conversation goes on, Dex realizes that when Lila talks about what it feels like to be an addict, she’s talking about things he can identify with. Things he knows.
Unnerved, Dex hurriedly leaves the diner. And when he tells Rita that NA won’t help and he’d rather face this alone, she takes him at his word and kicks him out, later on making it clear that she won’t take him back unless he does NA.

Confused, Dex starts scoping out his new victim, Roger Hicks, a used car salesman who’s murdered two women thus far. What starts out as a recon mission to get some of Hicks‘ DNA though, ends with Dex buying a mini-van (apparently due to Hicks‘ spiel about the roomy back, which can actually accommodate a deer carcass).
On a second recon trip, Dex sees Hicks‘ next potential victim, and feels he must act before this woman becomes Hicks‘ third, but can’t because of the on-going Bay Harbor Butcher investigation and Doakes’ continued interest in his affairs.

Back at work, Masuka gets Dex onto his team, and shows Dex the Field Morgue, where the recovered bodies are being stored. It’s an eerie sight, seeing Dex enter this huge, refrigerated space, where the body parts of his victims are laid out, incomplete and in disarray.
Later on, dropping off some dental records for Masuka, Dex runs into Lundy, who is sitting amongst the dead, waiting for them to answer the question: Why were they chosen?
During their conversation, Dex says that, of course, killing someone can never be justified. Lundy says, actually, there is one justification: if it would mean saving the life of an innocent.
Dex realizes that Lundy and his father would have agreed on that.
So he finally goes after Hicks, and it’s during their conversation that Hicks makes Dex realize that he does, after all, truly care for Rita, the subconscious reason for his purchase of the mini-van (what LaGuerta called a “Mommy Mobile”). Of course, Hicks pisses Dex off when he says, rather unwisely, “You’re better off without that c*nt.” Dex ices him for that.

Upon that realization—that Rita and the kids really do mean a lot to him—Dex returns to NA, and shares, revealing his real name, and talking about the “Dark Passenger” that rides with him.
Doakes arrives at the meeting, and it suddenly all makes sense to him, that wrongness he felt about Dex. And in a great reversal, Doakes sympathizes with Dex’s apparent plight, and says, Ok, just don’t get in my way at work, and we’re cool.
Triumphant—now that Doakes is off his back—and on a catharsis high, Dex visits Rita and shares his elation. Rita’s happy (and she loves the mini-van), but that all comes to a screeching halt when she sees who Dex’s sponsor is: Lila.

So the season is unfolding quite nicely, with the Bay Harbor Butcher investigation and Dex is an addict subplots developing in interesting ways. And though I did suspect they were going to make Lila Dex’s sponsor, and that this would set Rita off, that final shot of her at the wheel of the mini-van, as she sees Lila, and Dex totally oblivious to Rita’s reaction, was priceless.
There’s also something about Lila I can’t quite pin down at the moment, though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she’s got some deep, dark secret aside from being an addict.

(Image courtesy of sho.com.)

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 2
`Waiting to Exhale’
Written by: Clyde Phillips
Directed by: Marcos Siega
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Dex’s failure to dispatch Little Chino last episode results in the death of the mother who inadvertently asked Dexter to kill the hulking man-mountain in the first place, putting some more guilt on his plate, as if the guilt stemming from a) his murder of his brother, the Ice Truck Killer, and b) the effect of Paul’s death on Rita and the kids, wasn’t already enough.

Meanwhile, the discovery of Dex’s dumping ground last episode brings FBI Special Agent Lundy (Robert Carradine, undoubtedly familiar to the tween set as Lizzie McGuire’s dad) down to Miami. Lundy’s a “rock star,” responsible for corralling the Green River Killer, among others. And now, he’s here to track down the Bay Harbor Butcher, the tawdry monicker the newspapers have given Dexter, much to Dex’s annoyance.

Even as the salvaged bodies are being pieced together and the Bay Harbor Butcher’s body count rises, Deb is still unsuccessfully dealing with her rage and trauma. Those unresolved issues lead up to her putting a gun to the head of a teen-ager, who squeals on Little Chino’s gang to save his skin from the crazy gringa cop.
Little Chino (who is absent when the police round up his fellow gang members) soon tracks down the little snitch, only to fall right into Dexter’s hands.
Finally, Dex is ready to end his kill moratorium. And he’s found a new, safer way to dispose of his victims: use the Gulf Stream to drag the bodies far away from Miami. And Little Chino gets the honours of being the first to take the trip down the Stream.

Following the services and funeral for Paul, Rita confronts Dex, about the shoe, about the attack and set-up Paul claimed took place. After Dex admits to attacking Paul though, Rita comes to the wrong conclusion regarding where Dexter got the drugs for the set-up: she thinks Dex is an addict, and that this is where he sometimes disappears to like “Clark f*cking Kent.”
When Dex says—rather truthfully—that, yes, he has an addiction, Rita comforts him, and vows she’ll be with him every step of the way to beat this thing.

Once again, Dexter takes those strange riffs and makes for some of the most off-kilter primetime television viewing around today.
And the ensemble is having a grand time with these characters, notably Jennifer Carpenter, Julie Benz, and Michael C. Hall, of course.
Rita, in particular, is a fascinating character. Clearly, she is a stronger woman now than when we were first introduced to her at the top of Season 1. And yet, she still has a blind spot where the man she loves is concerned. First Paul, and now Dexter. And now this “Dex is an addict, I’ll help him through this” subplot is opening up, and that should be interesting to watch as it develops.

(Image courtesy of nymag.com.)