It’s October, where the weather in Georgia turns, well, a little less balmy. Every year in October I get the urge to watch more horror movies than usual and last week I saw two. “Quarantine,” which opened in theaters on Friday, and “Wicked Lake,” which went on sale at Best Buy last Tuesday. These two movies serve as perfect examples of how I feel genre pictures, especially those in the horror genre, deserve to be judged.

Let me start with “Quarantine,” which is a remake of a popular Spanish horror film called “Rec.” The film follows a television news crew that is shadowing a local fire department one evening. The crew goes out on a call with the firemen and soon are trapped in an apartment building with some very sick people. It seems like a nasty case of rapidly spreading rabies is tearing through the building and soon the government comes, trapping everyone inside for fear of the disease getting out.

There were only a few recognizable faces in the film. Jay Hernandez (“Hostel”) and the guy who played Fish on “Ally McBeal” headlined what was a no-name cast, which I think added to the appeal of the movie. Sometimes in a horror movie, you can tell who is going to get it first, just by how big a of a star they are. Not so with this movie.

Ever since “The Blair Witch Project,” so called “found footage” films have been a popular way to tell scary stories. It worked for “Cloverfield,” and it works for this film as well. Although, someone needs to write something into a script very early on that they “sure are glad they have this image stabilizer” or something, because the blurry action and the shaky camera technique can be very grating and nauseating.

Still, “Quarantine” had a good story with little pieces of how everything came together parsed out at just the right pace. The building itself was spooky and like other good monster/zombie movies, the rules for how people become monsters and what happens next were well-established by the time the mayhem really cranked up. I also loved the ending. The climactic scene is a terrific and tension-filled couple of minutes that really solidifies the film.

So, outside of some shaky camera work, which is part of the deal with this type of movie, I liked the movie and give it three stars. The acting was decent, the story was good and the director gave the audience plenty of thrills and chills. I don’t think there will be a better horror movie in theaters in the weeks leading up to Halloween.

Now, we come to “Wicked Lake,” which I purchased because a friend of mine, Carlee Baker, a Starr’s Mill graduate, stars in it. I watched the preview a few months ago and liked the premise of four girls going to a cabin in the woods, being pursued by some bad guys and then turning the tables on them when it turns out the girls are demons or witches or something like that. I have seen the movie and I still don’t know if they are demons or witches or what. I’ll say demons because they tended to growl like animals before they attacked.

Anyhoo, “Wicked Lake” is an example of a bad horror movie mainly because it is a bad movie. It doesn’t take but five minutes to realize that the next 85 minutes are going to be more than a little painful. In the first five minutes, we meet one of the demon girls and one of the bad guys. The dialogue was boring and it was too quiet which I guess is like saying the food was terrible and the portions were too small. The scene went on too long and the plot wasn’t getting advanced. It took forever to get the girls to the cabin and we never found out why they were going. None of them ever even screamed – “party” or “vacation” or even “trapping bad guys.” Which then brings me to how the bad guys even knew where the girls would be. The girls drive for what seems like hours, even stopping for gas, and we never see the bad guys following them. Then, the girls get to the cabin and hours later the bad guys just happen to show up.

I will say that this is where things get a little more interesting, but not too much better. The bad guys start to terrorize the girls, but the girls fight back and when the clock strikes midnight, they really fight back. There are some gross kills and some very gory sequences that follow and then two cops are added to the plot, way too late in the film if you ask me. I won’t ruin what happens at the end, but let’s just say they could make a “Wicked Lake 2” if they wanted to.

Let’s hope they don’t.

Overall, the girls were much better actors than the boys in the film, but the girls didn’t have a lot to work with. Carlee was very good and I felt she was practically the lead in the movie, which I don’t think was the director’s intention, so good for her. The horror aspects were as good as any that you’d see anywhere else, but the regular movie-making aspects were terrible. The pacing was bad, the script was poor and at times, especially early on, it felt more like a student movie than a direct-to-DVD horror film.

I did like the music, which was done by Ministry’s Al Jourgensen.

So, when you see reviews of “Quarantine” from other critics who say it was a bad movie, remember that I said it was better than “Wicked Lake.” Sometimes I find that other critics don’t watch the really bad movies. If you put “Quarantine” up against “Wicked Lake,” it’s not even close. One can easily watch and even enjoy “Quarantine.” I dare you to get through “Wicked Lake.” If you do, you’ll know true horror. You’ll have seen a truly bad movie and everything else will look better in comparison.

login to post comments