‘Quarantine’ - Contagious horror romp

It’s shaping up to be a banner year for horror movies. Two, count ‘em, two good ones in 2008 so far, and we’ve still got two and a half months to go.

Both “Rogue,” a crackerjack killer croc movie, and the newly released “Quarantine,” weren’t screened for critics. Either that’s the new mantra for studios producing horror films or studios simply don’t know the quality of their own product.

“Quarantine,” based on the highly regarded Spanish thriller “REC,” ” follows a perky television reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) filming a fluff piece on an L.A. fire department crew. She tags along with the squad when a call comes into the station, her intrepid camera man in tow.

The call in question is no ordinary emergency.

The fire fighters burst into an old apartment building and find a crazed woman who proceeds to chomp the neck of a cop already on the scene.

The woman isn’t the only apartment dweller who seems possessed.

Soon, others start attacking the rescue workers, while the reporter and camera man do their best to capture the insanity. Like “Cloverfield” and “The Blair Witch Project,” “Quarantine” is told entirely through a single video camera.

The movie stays as faithful to that concept as can be expected, forever rationalizing why the camera man keeps shooting despite the chaos. Part of the explanation involves a quarantine set up around the building. The Centers for Disease Control know something has been let loose inside, and they’re not about to let anyone out to spread the virus.

Unlike most modern horror stories, “Quarantine” delivers realistic characters who don’t fall into easily categorized templates.

Writer/director John Erick Dowdle clearly understands what makes a horror movie tick. He spends time developing relationships between the dwindling pack of heroes and establishing a suffocating sense of claustrophobia.

“Quarantine” is far from perfect. Carpenter’s character shrieks through the final 20 minutes of the film, and Dowdle stuffs in some final-act explanations which come off as both rushed and unnecessary.

Quibbles aside, “Quarantine” stands as a fiendishly simple tale sure to shock horror junkies by being better than 90 percent of its bloody predecessors.

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(Photo: Emergency officials rush to treat a fallen firefighter in the scary new horror film “Quarantine.”)