After a brief hiatus, the 31 Days of Horror are back with another found-footage staple from ten years ago. Funnily enough, this film is actually a remake of the Spanish horror film REC which will be featured in this countdown as well later this month.
QUARANTINE (10 October 2018)
Dir. John Erick Dowdle | Based on REC by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza
Almost a shot for shot remake of the original film REC, Quarantine has interestingly become relevant in the wake of the current news about James Wan remaking Korean zombie film Train to Busan. It definitely brings up the question– if the foreign original is still relatively new (REC came out only a year before Quarantine, and Train to Busan just came out in 2016) and has perfectly fine subtitles, then why do we need an American remake? Why are audiences — or perhaps, why do American filmmakers think that audiences are — incapable of watching these original, and often better, films. I believe that besides the unnecessary nature of such remakes, which are different in my mind from remakes of other American films (which I really don’t have a problem with), there is often something lost culturally which may have been central to the original foreign film. For example, just some food for thought, as we have no reliable train systems here in the states and certainly do not have a society where taking the train is so central to our world as they do in South Korea, what will James Wan use instead of a train? If he sticks to the train theme, where will the titular train be going? Back to today’s horror release, though, I still enjoy Quarantine as an entertaining pseudo-zombie movie and really do love certain aspects of it. If you haven’t seen it or its Spanish predecessor, please be sure to check out both. See what you think about the changes that happen as a result of remaking a film from another country.
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