UNCLE DON’S VIEWS OF NIL REPUTE:

Lookie, there’s one coming out of the closet, better whack it with your sledgehammer. Oh, there around the corner, here comes some more, knock ’em down and stomp ’em. Whoops, out of the back room, yet another, create multiple exit wounds larger than the 9 mm you fired at the sucker.

It’s Whac-a-Mole, zombie style, in “Quarantine.”

The little buggers are popping up everywhere in this night of the livid dead. They’re drooling, angry, hungry and really could stand some time at cotillion. I guess the fact that they’re rabid could excuse the drooling and angry part, but hungry, geez, that’s sooo Donner Party. Tossing these bad boys a few Hungry-Man dinners ain’t gonna slow them.

They’re rabid because some plain-wrap terrorist group is trying to come up with the mother of all diseases. These chuckleheads managed to conjure up something that causes people, dogs and rodents to foam, shake and do a decrepit job of acting. You can call it rabies; I’ll call it trite, hackneyed screenwriting.

They’re also not your grandfather’s zombies. You remember those guys. Slow, stupid and in black and white. In the grand tradition of the last few decades of zombie flicks these goofballs are faster, meaner, louder and seriously suffering from ADD, ADHD, EIEIO or some such problems, while involving the CDC, LAPD, LAFD, being confined due to a BNC and soiling their BVDs. BFD.

I suppose they’re not really zombies because zombies are supposed to be the dead, reanimated. But what is “Quarantine” but a dead reanimated “The Blair Witch Project?”

“Quarantine” starts with a poof-headed TV reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) with her cameraman (Steve Harris) doing a piece on the Los Angeles Fire Department a la “Discovery Channel” but with much less intelligence. That kills off the first reel.

Tagging along on an emergency call, Mutt and Jeff are off to the requisite flea-bag residence hotel. Through the door, up the stairs, into an apartment lit by thrift shop Tiffany, we get the privilege of meeting the charmingly bloody Mrs. Espinosa, accompanied by one of Michael Vick’s reject dogs. Oh yeah, and this here attack rat that must’ve been hanging around since “Willard.” There goes the second reel.

The third is an Easter egg hunt. The eggs being zombies or good guys. The prize being bludgeoned to death, or eaten alive when found. Everybody is hidden in every nook and every cranny. Good guys looking for zombies. Zombies looking for good guys. Bodies dropping like flies. Flies dropping on bodies. Good guys want out, bad guys want out, I want out. Eighty-nine minutes of this?

While the cameraman films, his vid-cam occasionally steadier than offal in an earthquake, he pans back and forth and back and forth like a spectator’s head at Wimbledon, stopping now and then to focus on the occasional reverse lobotomy or compound fracture or disembowelment.

High-decibel commentary is provided by the low-rent report-o-chick.

Jennifer is quite the screamer. Now, check out Marilyn Burns’ howling in the original “Texas Chainsaw.” Concurrently, find a wall where one can simultaneously beat one’s head and drag one’s fingernails.

That’ll feel better than listening to the never-ending mewling emanating from Jennifer Carpenter’s trap.

You’ll spot a few other actors abusing the profession, some I’d thought I’d heard of, a few I’d seen on “Law and Order.” Hasn’t every actor been on that show?

You’ll also find grandma’s meatloaf much scarier and more original than “Quarantine.”

Ending’s pretty good because, duh, it’s the ending.

UNCLE DON reviews B-rated movies and cheesy musical acts for the Daily Pilot. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].