Last night I went to the theatres and saw "Quarantine" with a group of my girlfriends. Here's the trailer, if you don't know what I'm talking about.
I had a hard time being terrified of anything in this movie except for the behaviour of the female main character. While she's screaming, panicking, screaming "Oh my god!" over and over and hyperventilating, the male characters are all calm. They're quarantined in the building and, er, scary things are happening (I won't give any spoilers in case someone wants to see it) and we're expected to believe that all the men are calm and relaxed. Their voices aren't even the least bit shaky.
After the movie we talked about what we thought about it. I brought up that I didn't like the way they'd portrayed the woman, as being the only one who was "weak" and terrified. My friend said "Well that's just how women are." I said to her, "Shouldn't we expect the men to be terrified in that situation too?" Apparently not!
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Yeah, horror is kind of (amusingly) represented by the female scream. It's oddly uncomfortable to see a man break down on film, come to think of it. Maybe that's why it sometimes makes us laugh, because it makes us so nervous.
I'm disappointed to hear that the only woman's freaking out. The idea of getting my ass munched by a dog or suddenly falling down an air shaft or whatever was kinda spooky, but if it's not enough to make the guys lose their heads, it can't possibly be that scary.
Modern western horror movies are lame for the most part. Just a bunch of cookie-cutter trash. No originality whatsoever.
Quarantine is an American remake of the Spanish movie [Rec] released last year, you know, for those who don't like to read silly things like subtitles.
I was personally very impressed with [Rec], as a horror movie fanatic.
The original film was not in any way, to my recollection, like this whatsoever. If anything, the main female in [Rec] was one of the bravest characters in the film, as were some of the other women.
I actually found the original to be a great social satire on the oppression of women, young women especially. I can't reveal too much, as it would contain spoilers.
I intend to see Quarantine, after I show my boyfriend [Rec], so we can compare how absolutely and inevitably terrible it is.
some more incentive to check out the original ([rec])- rotten tomatoes has [rec] at 94% and quarantine at 64%.
the reviews for [rec] were exceptional. and, well, we all know how crappy american remakes are.
It's something I've noticed as well especially in western horror. Heaven forbid we see a man terrified in a horror movie, only women should be scared of being eaten alive or ripped limb from limb or some such. Someone wrote once that's it's tied up in the twisted ideas we have about masculinity; that we couldn't possibly want to relate with a terrified man.
For another example just look at the director's comments on changing the main character in the Silent Hill movie from a male to a female. 'Gee the character is mostly terrified but fights through it because of love/wanting to protect a child? A man could never be believed to do that! Make it a woman!' possibly had something to do with the tough female cop and not wanting her to be braver/more confrontational then the male main character *facepalm*
I can't comment on this movie specifically because I haven't seen it, but I stay away from horror films ever since I went and saw THE HILLS HAVE EYES with my sisters.
There were tons of people who got up and left when it started to get really sick and disturbing. I would have left too, but I was with my sisters.
But we all agreed, seeing that movie was a big mistake.
A lot of these horror movies are just plain sick and degrading, with lots of violence toward women especially. I just can't trust them anymore.
Horror movies are used by filmmakers as a tool to examine and dissect societal issues. This is not always true, but the tied and true classics and many foreign films (I've found, at least) hold to this.
Steve-O, The Hills Have Eyes is actually one of the greatest examples ever of this. The original movie, from 1977, has been dissected by many academics.
"This group of cannibalistic guerillas, standing in for any number of oppressed, embattled and downtrodden minority/social/ethnic groups – from African and Native Americans to backwoods hillbillies to (in Tony Williams' astute analysis) the Viet Cong during the failed 1970s U.S. invasion (1) – manages to eke out a squalid existence by using discarded army surplus tools and weapons for the purpose of committing petty thievery."
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/19/hills.html
Another excellent article to read is by Tony Williams, who is mentioned in the above quote/link.
http://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/monsters-within-repression-family-horror-cinema
I would also recommend everyone who is interested in the idea of horror and the fact that it truly is a medium of analysis and criticism read The Monster Show by David J. Skal.
I love horror movies,and I am dismayed by the recent bunch of "Torture Porn" western horror movies. Has anyone here seen the Japanese horror movie Audition? I read an analysis of this movie with some really cool feminist undertones about expectations of women and women rebelling against their given roles in society (this is a horror movie, so the "rebellion" takes a pretty bloody path). I recommended it to anyone who has a problem with the way women are portrayed in a lot of recent American horror movies (captivity, touristas, even the scream movies).
I have to highly disagree with this.
I was impressed with Quarantine for many reasons, one of them was it's presentation of women through it's main character.
Firstly, is her repetoir with the firefighters. Yes, she does face sexual harassment, and confronts it. Although at one point she asks her cameraman to beat them up for her(nothing is perfect, sigh.)
Secondly, she repeatedly fights for her first amendment rights, and sometimes physically, even in the face of the terror around her. She will fight to have her abuse told to the rest of the world, she will not be silenced.
Her terror may be overemphasized because she is the main character, but we also understand her to be the most logical, and human. We are her, the others are crazy.
No she isn't the physically strongest character. But do you really in real life expect her to be? She is a television personality, which we know to be pressured to maintain a low weight/feminine appearance, surrounded by firefighters and policemen, and a cameraman(and those things are f-ing heavy) the other "civilian" characters are just as weak as her(think of the veterinarian.) And she holds her own pretty well, she does survive the longest.
Some of the other female characters are not weak or stupid either. The wife of the caretaker, even as she is being terrorized, is logical enough to tell them of a secret passage, so far undisclosed, and tell them how to access it.
The mother is a overly stereotyped character and I wasn't too happy with that, but again nothing is perfect.
As for other elements of the film, I thought that the representation of a variety of different "types" of people was interesting and respectfully done. Take the "foreign" tenents. Sure they can't speak english, but the other people stick up for them and try to take care of them, they also at the end, try to help the others even though they can't fully understand what is happening to them. I found the inclusion of them to be particualarly interesting. What would it be like to be in their position?
Also the Cameraman's character was a very interesting element. He is black. But they don't stereotype him. He is in a "helping" role, but so far in this horrormentary genre, all of the camerapeople have been white. He also is not shown as indifferent and faceless, as was the case with Diary of The Dead. We the viewer know him and care about him as much as he "knows" us and "cares" about us, as the viewer is a character as well. Also he is one of the more "humane" characters in the movie, think of te camera as weapon scene, and his expressed regret.
Is it a perfect movie? No. Do we need to call it on it's flaws? yes. We need to dicuss these things and disagree so that in the future they do better.