John Erick Dowdle, who directed the upcoming POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES (which is a skin-crawling film) sent me an update regarding QUARANTINED, the remake of [Rec] that he’s working on with his brother Drew. (I met the Dowdle boys at Tribeca earlier this year and have be lucky enough to stay in touch – great guys!)
Both films are about a news crew trapped inside of a building with its infected residents. Warning, there’s a SPOILER concerning the nature of the “infection” in both flicks, so don’t read if you don’t want to know a single thing.
Quarantine is going very well. We stayed pretty true to the original.
We did do some more character work on it, as well as adding some more
situations, and are grounding it a bit more in reality. In our
version, it’s a severe strain of rabies as opposed to a supernatural
thing. It being rabies, we brought some other mammals into the
equation. From the filmmaking side, we’re going to edit this much
less, so there will be 20 minute segments that appear without an edit
point. This will feel a lot more “real time” than the original, and
yet it’ll have a quicker pace. That being said, we’re taking a fairly
“if it ain’t broke” approach to adaptation, and we’re very lucky that
the original is so good. I think this is going to turn out very well.
I certainly like the sound of “20 minute segments that appear without an edit
point.” Although I’m naturally skeptical about remaking something that is itself BRAND NEW, I won’t deny my excitement for the American version, having seen how creepy the camcorder can be in these guys’ hands.
[Rec], which is supposed to be an insane movie-going experience, was just released in Spain and should be here before the Dowdles’ version of the tale hits on October 17 of next year.
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