Main cast: Mercedes Masöhn (Jenny), Josh Cooke (Henry), Mattie Liptak (George), Noree Victoria (Shilah Washington), Ignacio Serricchio (Ed Ramirez), Bre Blair (Paula), Lamar Stewart (Preston), George Back (Ralph Bundt), Erin Smith (Nicca), Lynn Cole (Bev Stevens), Sandra Lafferty (Louise), Tom Thon (Doc Stevens), Julie Gribble (Susan), John Curran (Captain Forrest), Andrew Benator (Willsy), and Phillip DeVona (Nial Britz)
Director: John Pogue
Quarantine 2: Terminal is a low-budget sequel to – what else? – Quarantine. While Quarantine is almost a frame-by-frame remake of REC, however, this one is purely made in America, which may not be a good thing in this particular instance.
Filmed without frills – look, Mom, no shaky hand-cam gimmicks – this one takes place shortly after the events in the previous movie. when a flight to Nashville sees a fat passenger, Ralph, goes berserk and starts attacking other people on the flight. I know, gross scary fat dude – that cliché never gets old. A flight attendant, Paula, is bitten before Ralph is restrained, and it’s all downhill from there once the plane makes an emergency landing at Las Vegas. Yes, they find themselves quarantined in the airport arrival for reasons unknown to them. I don’t know why. Zombie-things will fit right in with the freaks of Las Vegas, after all.
Anyway, the poor baggage handler Ed is at the wrong place and the wrong time, and he finds himself trying to help these people. He has a three-year old daughter, you know, so he’s really putting a lot on the line for these doomed sods. And things get fun when more people get infected and become zombie-like violent monsters. With the whole place on lock down, where are these people going to go? Zombie party, woo-hoo!
The first half hour or so of Quarantine 2: Terminal almost succeeds in capturing the sense of claustrophobic terror that made REC and Quarantine a joyous creep show to behold, but it is soon derailed by increasingly cartoon-like close-calls and huge lapses of logic that are hard to overlook. For example, a passenger manage to get her firearms past security in the airport, and a lowly employee is aware of an escape route that the higher-ups apparently don’t know or forget to bar.
The silly moments are often coupled to increasing use of unimaginative stock horror movie tropes, culminating in Shredder’s grandfather running loose looking for victims while overlooking a kid right in front of him, because we can’t have a kid get munched in movies no matter how illogical it would be for him to avoid the fate.
By the time the movie is over and done with, it’s hard to remember why I found the early parts of the film scary. It didn’t take long for it to turn into another cartoon-like horror movie where the emphasis is more on flash and chase scenes instead of build-up of atmosphere or chills. All in all, it’s a watchable but very average movie – just what a straight-to-video low-budget horror movie typically is.
