Quarantine (2008) Starring Lucy Liu, Robert Forster & Cameron Richardson Directed by John Erick Dowdle Written by John Erick Dowdle & Drew Dowdle

It is that time of year when Hollywood dishes out its latest trends of horror movies, not only in theaters but straight to DVD. This is when quality horror gets smashed next to lackluster.

One such theatrical release this year was “Quarantine,” starring Jennifer Carpenter (Exorcism of Emily Rose). The film uses the first-person point-of-view technique used in such films as “The Blair Witch Project,” and more recently, “Diary of the Dead.”

The only difference between “Quarantine” and those films is simple. “Quarantine,” is just flat out awful.

Carpenter plays a reality show host who, along with her one camera man. Go out on one night with the Los Angeles Fire Department. After getting the low down on how firemen carry themselves while at their station, a call comes in that sends Carpenter and crew to a apartment complex where a woman was heard screaming and will not open her door.

From there, the film goes into a predictable tirade when people start eating people for no apparent reason. That is until the entire apartment building is sealed off, literally, by the National Guard and local police while they wait for the CDC to arrive.

The waiting game turns the people who haven’t been “infected,” against one another while all parties involved try to figure out exactly what is going on to them and why. As it turns out, the “virus” that is causing people to eat each other is a strong form of rabies that is almost instantly contracted once bitten by a carrying host.

Think “Cujo” meets “Night of the Living Dead,” but instead the film is completely ruined by what was shown months in advance in the trailer of the film. The night-vision camera focused in on Carpenter and as she inches closer to it she is suddenly dragged away by an unknown being.

If it seems like I am giving a lot of the film away it is because I am deterring people away from wasting their time. If you want a good scare before “Saw 5” comes out on Oct. 24 I suggest going to your local video store and renting your favorite horror film of the past or one from the 70s or 80s that looks cool on the cover.

Anything will do as long as “Quarantine” is avoided completely without out any regret for missing it.

It should also be noted that “Quarantine,” according to the kind folks at www.imdb.com, is a remake of a Spanish film called “[Rec].” And by judging from the responses on not only the “[Rec]” message board but that of “Quarantine,” both films are carbon copies of the other with a few differences that make the Spanish version, as usual compared to American remakes, the better film.

I can say at least with the performances, the film could have been a lot worse.

Carpenter, for the most part, carried herself decently throughout although the main source of action and suspense, if there was any, came from the supporting cast.

Jay Hernandez (Hostel), and Jonathan Schaech (That Thing You Do), played very convincing firemen – Schaech even donning a thick Wyatt Earp mustache, while Marin Hinkle (Two and a Half Men), and Rade Serbedzija (Snatch), completed the tenant and landlord casting making the actors at least credible.

For the hour and fifty plus minutes it took for this film to get somewhere, the ending was the worst it could have been. It is not hard to ruin the ending due to it already have been plastered all over TV screens so I will not spill on the “twist” the filmmakers tried to pull on the audience.

What needs to be said is that if you really want to waste $6.50 on a matinee movie anytime soon, “Quarantine” is the movie to waste it on.