The Synopsis: A late night news crew from a local TV station goes along with a fire department's truck on a call to an apartment building, which has a demonic rage zombie infestation. The building is quarantied by the CDC and local police, keeping the news crew and tenants inside. The news crew and the tenants all either turn into zombies or die horribly.
The Problems: I saw this movie and I saw the Spanish film they ripped the plot from ([REC], which I recommend if you like horror films). Granted, Quarantine sucked by virtue of being a ripoff of a foreign film, but both films have the same weakness: That of being shot from the POV of a newscrew camera guy with a 20-25 pound camera on his shoulder. If they were going for realism, they failed miserably-What rational person, when faced with rage zombies, is going to keep recording with such a huge fucking camera?! They actually used the camera to bludgeon a zombie to death with! With the lens part, no less! It just zoomed in, zoomed out on the zombie's face! That was just so ridiculous I laughed. I really did.
Along with that was the standard horror movie stupidity-The people keep trying to escape the building even though the troops outside are quite willing to shoot anyone who so much as pokes their head out a window, they don't grab weapons, they don't stay in one place and barricade it (the one guy who suggests this is the asshole and thus dies horribly thanks to a zombie dog), and they keep the infected firemen in the same room they're waiting in before CDC comes in.
But! Rather than simply leave it at that, I'm going to suggest how the "POV horror" film concept could work with my own idea. Steal it and I will hunt you down and eat your soul.
Screenplay Concept Written By a Dummy:
"Death Warrant"
The POV is provided by the SWAT unit member's helmet cameras.
LOS ANGELES. A SWAT unit is dispatched for a high risk warrant service to an apartment complex, where a crazy militant cult is apparently threatening to blow themselves up with fertilizer bombs. Once inside, the SWAT members come across what appear to be several sick cult members. Outside, police and the CDC set up a blockade and quarantine the building. The SWAT team members are told to find the cult leaders and maintain order until such time as they are allowed outside.
The SWAT team, while not knowing what's going on and suspecting something is up, continue their mission, securing non-cult civilians and children of the cult. They then encounter severe resistance from cult members with weapons who are not brought down by non-lethal force. Lethal force is applied but it seems these cult members are a lot harder to bring down than thought. It is at this point they find a non-infected cult member who explains they were trying to summon their dark lord, and used a few of their children as vessels for minor demons in preparation for the Big Bad himself. Understandably the SWAT members find this hard to believe-Until the two team members left to keep an eye on the secured civilians report the cult children have gone insane, becoming like vicious monsters.
The situation becomes worse, with some civilians fighting with the SWAT members against an increasing number of zombies. The cult member who talked about the demon summoning is persuaded by the threat of being thrown to the zombies to admit that the demons cannot survive outside a human body, even their Dread Lord. The final ceremony is happening tonight, and if it succeeds, the Demon Lord will break free and begin spreading his zombie plague across the world.
The SWAT team members manage to report this to their superiors, who state that the military is being called in. The SWAT leader asks for the chance to take out the cultists before the ritual is completed, and after seeing children turned into demons and people into zombies, the superiors promise what little time they can. The SWAT team and a few uninfected civilians fight their way into the Cult's inner sanctum, trying to interrupt the ritual-Unfortunately, they arrive too late, and the Demon Lord has possessed the leader of the cult.
The SWAT team members decide the only course of action is to fight as hard as they can to try and bring the Demon Lord down, but fall one by one until only one is left. Locating the cult's stockpile of fertilizer, he sacrifices himself by using an improvised explosive to blow the whole place up along with the Demon Lord. The helmet feed from the cameras records their last moments as the policemen die heroic deaths to save the world.
THE END
The Problems: I saw this movie and I saw the Spanish film they ripped the plot from ([REC], which I recommend if you like horror films). Granted, Quarantine sucked by virtue of being a ripoff of a foreign film, but both films have the same weakness: That of being shot from the POV of a newscrew camera guy with a 20-25 pound camera on his shoulder. If they were going for realism, they failed miserably-What rational person, when faced with rage zombies, is going to keep recording with such a huge fucking camera?! They actually used the camera to bludgeon a zombie to death with! With the lens part, no less! It just zoomed in, zoomed out on the zombie's face! That was just so ridiculous I laughed. I really did.
Along with that was the standard horror movie stupidity-The people keep trying to escape the building even though the troops outside are quite willing to shoot anyone who so much as pokes their head out a window, they don't grab weapons, they don't stay in one place and barricade it (the one guy who suggests this is the asshole and thus dies horribly thanks to a zombie dog), and they keep the infected firemen in the same room they're waiting in before CDC comes in.
But! Rather than simply leave it at that, I'm going to suggest how the "POV horror" film concept could work with my own idea. Steal it and I will hunt you down and eat your soul.
Screenplay Concept Written By a Dummy:
"Death Warrant"
The POV is provided by the SWAT unit member's helmet cameras.
LOS ANGELES. A SWAT unit is dispatched for a high risk warrant service to an apartment complex, where a crazy militant cult is apparently threatening to blow themselves up with fertilizer bombs. Once inside, the SWAT members come across what appear to be several sick cult members. Outside, police and the CDC set up a blockade and quarantine the building. The SWAT team members are told to find the cult leaders and maintain order until such time as they are allowed outside.
The SWAT team, while not knowing what's going on and suspecting something is up, continue their mission, securing non-cult civilians and children of the cult. They then encounter severe resistance from cult members with weapons who are not brought down by non-lethal force. Lethal force is applied but it seems these cult members are a lot harder to bring down than thought. It is at this point they find a non-infected cult member who explains they were trying to summon their dark lord, and used a few of their children as vessels for minor demons in preparation for the Big Bad himself. Understandably the SWAT members find this hard to believe-Until the two team members left to keep an eye on the secured civilians report the cult children have gone insane, becoming like vicious monsters.
The situation becomes worse, with some civilians fighting with the SWAT members against an increasing number of zombies. The cult member who talked about the demon summoning is persuaded by the threat of being thrown to the zombies to admit that the demons cannot survive outside a human body, even their Dread Lord. The final ceremony is happening tonight, and if it succeeds, the Demon Lord will break free and begin spreading his zombie plague across the world.
The SWAT team members manage to report this to their superiors, who state that the military is being called in. The SWAT leader asks for the chance to take out the cultists before the ritual is completed, and after seeing children turned into demons and people into zombies, the superiors promise what little time they can. The SWAT team and a few uninfected civilians fight their way into the Cult's inner sanctum, trying to interrupt the ritual-Unfortunately, they arrive too late, and the Demon Lord has possessed the leader of the cult.
The SWAT team members decide the only course of action is to fight as hard as they can to try and bring the Demon Lord down, but fall one by one until only one is left. Locating the cult's stockpile of fertilizer, he sacrifices himself by using an improvised explosive to blow the whole place up along with the Demon Lord. The helmet feed from the cameras records their last moments as the policemen die heroic deaths to save the world.
THE END
