Since The Blair Witch Project, there has been no shortage of horror films utilizing the handheld-camera conceit. Quarantine’s major contribution to this beyond-played out subgenre is that at one point, the camera — which belongs to a television crew piggybacking on what was supposed to be a routine fire-department call — is actually used to bludgeon a zombie to death.

The subsequent scene in which the shell-shocked cameraman quietly wipes the blood from his lens is the closest that this mostly faithful remake of the 2007 Spanish hit [Rec], comes to meta-cinematic commentary; Quarantine is more concerned with milking its generic particulars — namely a sealed-off location (a musty Los Angeles apartment building that becomes the epicenter of a possible biological apocalypse) and an easily spread virus that turns its victims into drooling, rabid monsters (shades of 28 Days Later, et al). — for their maximum jump-scare potential.

As in [Rec], exposition is sacrificed for immediacy, and while some viewers will be annoyed that we’re given no real reason to care about the various characters before they’re reduced to bogeymen — the inevitable “final girl” being the perky news reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) who picked the wrong night to go out on assignment — the film never purports (a la, say, Diary of the Dead) to be more than a jolt machine, a modest goal that it attains.