Infection: Armageddon Virus
Seen in: Quarantine (2008) and Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)
Type: Enhanced strain of Rabies Lyssavirus. Transmitted via fluids (e.g. blood, saliva). Interspecies transmission possible.
Original Source: Chemical weapons lab, stolen by terrorist doomsday cult.
Quarantine is a remake of the Spanish found footage film REC, following a reporter who is shadowing firemen in an apartment building where a strange virus has taken hold. While the initial premise is the same, the cause of the outbreak is different in the two versions. The American remake uses an advanced strain of rabies as its cause and for the most part portrays the symptoms accurately (if accelerated). Not so much in the sequel.
Both the Quarantine films feature a select group of victims in a single location (an apartment building and an airplane/terminal), however in the first film the found footage style makes it difficult to always accurately determine who bit who. There is some guess work involved to plot a path of infection, and some answers came from the second film (although not all).
Quick introduction to the protagonists/rabies fodder of the first film: The key characters are a reporter named Angela, her cameraman Scott and a fireman called Jake (one of two that they are following). There are also a number of residents in the apartment building, the majority of whom make an appearance (with two exceptions – one of whom appears in the second film).
The first victim that the audience meets is actually not the first to be infected. That honour falls to one of the apartment dogs, named Max. It’s not revealed what infected Max, however in the sequel it is confirmed that the terrorist responsible for spreading it uses infected rats as carriers. A large number of rats are seen in cages near the end of the film but one is seen roaming free, making it likely that one of these was responsible for the former good boy turning bad. Max isn’t present in the apartment during the film as he has been taken to the vets (and promptly infected all the other animals).
The first human victim is Mrs Espinoza. She is the reason that the firemen are in the building at all, along with two police officers. Unfortunately, when confronted with the blood soaked octogenarian who is foaming from the mouth, they’re not exactly cautious enough and she takes a bite out of Officer McCreedy as well as fireman Fletcher (who gets tossed over the stairs) who was taking care of her while the police officer was being tended to. During the few minutes she is left unattended, she also manages to attack the cleaning lady who is found stumbling around her apartment bleeding.
Jake gathers the apartment residents together and finds another infected woman in apartment 4A. Her cause of infection is a little bit more obvious as there is a very aggressive rat running around her room. This woman, Elise, isn’t at the violent stage and is put with the other two bitees where they are being treated by a vet.
2008 Screen Gems
Another infected dog, the pet of Mrs Espinoza makes an appearance. It had appeared earlier but wasn’t showing signs of infection at that point so it’s not clear if he got the infection from his owner or just fell foul of one of the rats. It attacks one if the residents, an obnoxious man named Randy. Randy doesn’t technically get infected, as when he’s next seen he’s very very dead, but if he had lived, he would definitely have contracted it.
The building receives a visit from two CDC officers who are going to ‘test’ the residents for infection. Fun thing about rabies, blood tests do not work and the only way to confirm is by brain tissue. Fletcher objects to this experiment violently and takes a bite out of one of the CDC officers, who is then locked in with the fireman, the police officer and Lawrence, the vet. Lawrence also gets infected at this point but it’s offscreen (kind of) making it impossible to determine which of the three already infected took him down. Given that it’s shown to take a little while for the symptoms to manifest, it was most likely Fletcher or Officer McCreedy and the former was certainly more active during his last appearance.
At this point attention is drawn to one of the owners of Max the infected dog, a little girl who has a fever. While her mother claims it is bronchitis and that she has been ill for a month or so, it becomes clear that she has the virus. Because she bites her mother. As the girl, Briana, was infected prior to the events of the film it’s another case of uncertain transmission. The two likely options are from an infected rat or from Max the dog, as the virus isn’t just spread through biting but also through saliva. And dogs drool a lot (especially rabies dogs).
2008 Screen Gems
As well as her own mother, Briana is responsible for turning the second police officer, Wilensky. It’s at this point where things become really difficult to track as the sealed infected break free and the limitations of a first person camera means that if Scott the cameraman isn’t there, we don’t get to see what happened. However, we do get to see Lawrence running after Jwahir, one half of a couple who don’t speak English, and her screams are heard. Next time she’s seen, both her and her husband are turned so it’s very likely he got both of them.
The second CDC guy and apartment resident Sadie both received a bite in the ensuing chaos. Again I’m going to assign these to Lawrence for the following reasons.
Both of them fled up the stairs ahead of the actual break out meaning the only infected person not trapped somewhere was Officer Wilensky who had only just been bitten.
When a shot of the infected breaking out is shown, the only one that is seen actively trying to get out is Lawrence. While Officer McCreedy and Fletcher are both shown later on, they were both restrained previously meaning they were probably far slower (this is reinforced in the case of Fletcher whose leg was broken by his fall and is seen in the background of a shot crawling around). It’s possible the first CDC guy got either Sadie or his colleague but I don’t remember actually seeing him again.
CDC 2 and Sadie both get themselves one victim each, taking out the apartment owner Yuri and his wife Wanda respectively.
There is a lot of running around at this point with various residents being shown as infected (all mentioned previously) and our ‘heroine’ Angela generally being insufferable. Unfortunately, the relatively useful Jake is the next to get taken out, falling victim to Yuri. He’s not seen again but it’s likely he got turned.
The next two infected shown are… confusing. I have no idea who they are or why they’re in the building. During Scott and Angela’s attempts to flee they end up in the attic (despite there being no exits up there) and find the makeshift lab. There is an infected boy shown briefly hiding in a crawl space (while it is possible he was the one causing the first infections, I think if someone got bitten by a strange half naked boy they would have mentioned it).
2008 Screen Gems
There is also an emaciated man wandering around. Initially I thought this was the resident who lived in the attic, as its mentioned earlier in the film that he’s not been seen for a while but in the sequel the audience is introduced to Henry who mentions about his lab in the apartment building. I did wonder if he was the father of the foreign couple, who is mentioned as being paralytic and still being upstairs when everyone is gathered but the attic was locked when Angela and Scott enter, so it seems unlikely. I can only assume, as there is a surgeons table shown with bloody rags on it that this was a test subject that Henry left free to roam after his departure. I don’t know.
The strange man gets Scott and the last shot shows Angela being dragged away but doesn’t show who is doing the dragging. Or if she gets infected (she probably does).
With everyone turned into rabid zombies and either roaming the apartment or dead, lets have a look at the symptoms of the disease.
Initial signs are fairly benign. Fever, disorientation and mild delirium, leaking from the tear ducts and constant saliva. There’s also mention of difficulty swallowing and some mild paralysis. These are all symptoms of rabies, as is the aggression which follows. I can’t find any information on whether rabies makes you suddenly immune to bullets (as the infected are shown to be very… resilient) or if ‘aggression’ stems to ‘chasing down uninfected persons and biting the heck out of them’.
Here’s one of the other fun facts about rabies – while it is technically treatable, once symptoms show up it’s pretty much fatal. The film says 100% fatality rate. The NHS website says ‘almost always’.
Fortunately for people in the real world, rabies takes 3 to 12 weeks to show symptoms. The strain in the Quarantine films is accelerated but the rate of development seems to vary across the infected. People like Sadie, Nadif, Jwahir and Lawrence seem to degrade very quickly. Within moments of infection, they have skipped over all the other symptoms and gone straight to aggression. Fletcher, Officer McCreedy and Elise spend the most of their screen time in the foaming at the mouth stage, motionless before they suddenly spring into action. And then there is the outlier, Briana… who apparently has been sick for a long time and apart from a fever seems to be fine right up until she bites. Of course it is possible that Briana was sick with something else before she got infected. Another theory is inspired by the sequel, where it’s mentioned that Henry (the owner of the attic laboratory) was using it to develop an antidote for the infection (for his own protection, he was very keen on releasing the plague on the rest of the world) and refers to the apartment residents as test subjects. Maybe Briana was infected and whatever antidote Henry developed was keeping her symptoms at bay?
We’ll never know.
Overall, it’s a fairly horrible disease. It’s not clear if the infected feel any pain (outside of having their neck torn open) and they seem to lose themselves fairly quickly. While a deadly, due to its destruction of the brain there seems to be less suffering involved than others in films.
Transmission: B+
Curability: F
Death rate: A-
Horror Factor: B
Biohazard Level
Note: Traditional rabies is considered a level 2 biohazard, maybe verging on level 3 (due to the time required for symptoms to manifest making it highly treatable in most cases). I’ve ranked it as level 4 because with the acceleration of symptoms, infected people are basically dead.