Fighting the unknown

She shot to stardom after playing the title role in the No. 1 hit horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose.   Now, Jennifer Carpenter exorcises demons of the viral kind in Columbia Pictures’ new terrifying thriller Quarantine.  

In the movie, TV reporter Angela (Carpenter) and her cameraman are assigned to spend the night shift with a Los Angeles Fire Station. After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment units. They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown.

For the filmmakers, casting of the main character, Angela, was key to the movie’s success. The role calls for a solid arc. Audiences meet Angela as a perky, rookie reporter for a local TV show, just beginning her career. As she goes through the ordeal, Angela morphs from an optimist to a determined and brave then ultimately terrorized woman facing her own mortality.

Discussing Quarantine, Carpenter says, “The thing that turned me on about it is the idea that we’re this group of people, mostly strangers, trapped in a building, fighting for our lives. Safety is just through that windowpane. It’s just a couple of floors down, it’s just through that door — salvation is an arm’s length away. Keeping that interesting throughout the whole film, plus the idea that my main scene partner was going to be a camera, I thought that was pretty intriguing.”

Carpenter says it was difficult to portray relentless fear which her character undergoes. “The script asks you to go at 100 miles an hour from start to finish,” she says.  “It’s important to maintain that fear, that idea you have 30 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe six minutes to live.  It’s been exhausting.”

To keep up her intensity, Carpenter says she used different “silly tricks.”  “Sometimes it’s playing music that gets me going,” she says, “or it’s screaming before a take, or giving myself a second to really let everything be real and settle in. Sometimes it’s as simple as saying ‘one, two, three — GO!’ and seeing what happens. But it was a challenge to keep up that pace, keep it authentic and rooted in something real.”

Discussing her work in the movie, director John Dowdle says, “Jennifer’s just amazing.  She stays in the zone all day long and brings too much to every take. She comes up with wonderful ideas and is so wildly talented. There’s nothing she can’t do.”

Given the effort put into the piece, Carpenter is thrilled with how the movie turned out. “I think it’s one of those films you have to watch over and over.  Audiences are going to be like, ‘How did they do that?’ That’s the fun part. If someone asked me what to expect from the film, I would ask them what they themselves expect, knowing what they know about the movie from the trailer or the Internet or friends — then I’d tell them it’s even better.”

Quarantine opens today in theaters nationwide.