Quadrant (2024) Review: A Blood-Soaked Descent into Virtual Fear and Desire!
I’ve been watching Charles Band movies since before I knew who Charles Band was as a director and have wanted to watch Charlies Band movies since before I was even legally allowed to watch them.
Being a child of the ‘80s, we all remember those trips to the horror aisle of the local video store. Jumbo Video was my local VHS rental establishment, before Blockbuster. The cover art for films such as Re-Animator, Subspecies, Ghoulies, Parasite, and Puppet Master left my imagination to soar, and I found myself inventing stories about these crazy images. I would later rent these films and enjoyed every last one of them! I would also, unwittingly, rent movies like RoboWars or Arena from the sci-fi aisle, not realizing they were all from the same fountainhead of production.
Later I would come to appreciate Full Moon Productions and all their wild series and intriguing stand-alone films. Such creative variety and longevity are an impressive feat, only matched by the equally legendary Roger Corman.
I was of course then very pleased to read the interview done with Charles Band by our very own Jay Creepy. See link to interview here (From An Empire to the Moon: A Severed Cinema Interview with Charles Band). With that, let us begin with the review of Charles Band’s latest film in 2024, Quadrant.
A modern girl traverses thru a foggy virtual reality version of London. She enters a room and there is a girl on a bloody bed with her face smashed to smithereens. A killer hands this girl a knife to which she smiles perversely in acceptance.
Outside the VR helmet, Erin is greeted by two young scientists, Meg and Harry. They want to know what her experience was like in the Quadrant. They wonder if she felt dread in there. But no. Excitement. She’s the first who’s felt that way so far. Erin says it was a turn on being in the Quadrant.
Meg says Erin claimed she was scarred of that exact image, having a total obsession with Jack the Ripper. But once in the middle of it she wasn’t afraid. It was different than in the Quadrant. Even with Jack the Ripper standing beside her.
Harry reminds her that the Quadrant only projects what’s already in your mind.
Meg and Harry tell their subject, Erin, that she’s here to remove her fear by confronting them. Burn them down. But Erin doesn’t want to confront them, just revel in them. Enjoy the experience, not remove it.
Erin takes her guinea pig money and gives some of it away to a starving musician.
Meanwhile, Meg and Harry debate using the Quadrant for helping people psychologically versus just letting them have fun. This is indeed a poignant matter for discussion these days in cinema. Is film itself a tool for moral correction or can it just be entertainment without moral conscience? Should cinema be there for your inner desires in private, or to rationalize your outer desires and worldview, instilling your proclivities to the world?
Erin befriends Robert, a young guy who actually needs the Quadrant to get over his fears and invites him over to a sweet spot of hers, her home next to a cemetery. Her home is littered with pictures of Jack the Ripper and live photos of his victims from the 1880s which doesn’t help his nerves any.
Robert has a nervous conversation about how he can’t control his fear and regrets taking the pills that aid his receptivity to the Quadrant. He sees Erin’s face which transforms into a demon. When he awakes it was all a VR experiment resulting in his face being bloodied. Dreams turned to a real bloody face.
Erin promises she’ll go into the world with him and save him from his fears. She goes in and seduces a whore as Jack the Ripper herself. She’s handed the knife by Jack in the Quadrant. Erin takes the whore’s blouse off and kisses her, woman to woman. She gets quite aroused, then exhilarated by stabbing the young prostitute graphically to death. With VR headset on, she is overwhelmingly excited.
Directly after that Erin picks up the young starving musician girl on the street…
A very sensuous lesbian sex scene occurs tempered by a picture of one of Jack’s victims who looks just like the hooker right behind the hooker’s head. The whore pulls out a switchblade and says that’s her surprise for anyone who fucks with her.
Suprise! Erin lives out her Ripper fantasy for real now, stabbing the hooker in a bloody frenzy. The blood is everywhere. Lovely! Effective scene.
Back at the Quadrant lab, Meg is getting drunker and drunker. Meg apparently also had crossover between her fantasy and reality experiences. She knows it could be dangerously real in the Quadrant.
Erin meanwhile tries to convince her very scared of everything boyfriend, Robert, that Harry and Meg haven’t really helped him and that he just runs from his fears rather than confront/destroy the fears in his mind. She wants him to be fearless and starts to fuck him in the nude on the carpet. That usually helps!
This inspires both Erin and Robert to help each other. While in the nightmare land of the Quadrant, Robert is afraid and monsters attack while she gets her jollies off slashing away protecting him. Hand meet glove. They agree to subvert Meg and Harry as they’re not really curing them anyway.
In the lab, Harry asks Robert if he took his meds to prep for the Quadrant. He boldly says, “not today.” On the VR helmet goes. Robert sees screaming female banshees, a demon lord, and zombies in the woods baying for him. This time Robert is brave! He slices those evil creatures to bloody stumps. The graphics are stunningly good.
Robert returns out of the Quadrant, victorious, and panting like he just had a satisfying orgasm. Harry instantly attributes his success to Quadrant therapy. But hold on their pal. Robert rejects the request to do a full testimonial interview about the Quadrant’s healing psychological abilities just yet. Robert gets angry that Erin helped him more by fighting alongside him than him being alone in the reflection of his projected nightmare.
What is more psychologically healing? Are movies teaching heroism thru psychotic bravery more healing or is reveling in nightmarish dread and “surviving” more healing? Or does it just leave you impotent to enact real change in your real life by giving you artificial success or closure? Which is better therapy?
Robert leaves. It’s Erin’s turn in the Q again. She’s back on those foggy London streets as a creepy looking Jack Ripper who is stalking Robert now. Erin gets imaginary Robert to distract a hooker as she stabs her from behind.
Meg stops the program because it’s not helping her just exciting her.
Meg confronts Erin to stop playing the system like a game or there will be consequences. Erin is unafraid. Meg wants her to leave Robert alone so they can continue with his Quadrant treatments.
After Meg tells Robert that Erin is very dangerous there is another veiled threat that Meg needs sedation because she was experimented on first in the Quadrant, and she has some dangerous ability or history of violence we haven’t seen yet. Harry warns her she may go out of control without a proper calming down. Seems inevitable, a showdown between Meg and Erin.
In a drug extended session to prolong the Quadrant’s effects outside the lab, Robert sees Erin pick up a hooker. Robert hears the screaming hooker. Was it real or fantasy?
Harry says he knows it can work to cure Robert but Rob’s having doubts. Harry confesses it worked before (implying it worked for Meg!) Harry tells Robert to stay away from Erin. But he’s promised to meet her tonight. Too bad!
Rob and Erin discuss the murder in Quadrant they committed together. She thinks it felt natural. Rob did not. Erin asks him to help her remove the dead body.
Meanwhile Meg’s in the Quadrant now. She’s spying on Erin and Robert. She thinks they need to stop Erin now. Harry refuses. No cops.
Suddenly, Erin appears to Meg in the Quadrant as Jack the Ripper and slashes at her. Meg surprisingly runs away. But how? She is still with Robert in the real world? How? Because there is a residual creation of her running around loose in the Quadrant disconnected from Erin directly.
Harry wants Robert to go in and summon Erin’s Ripper avatar to lay a trap for her.
He goes in but Erin’s Ripper murders him, in the Quadrant, for his betrayal.
Harry goes to Erin’s house in the real world. I shan’t give up anymore plot. Suffice it to say I’m intrigued, as should you be. An epic showdown in the Quadrant and beyond is for certain.
Quadrant Uppers:
I like the character work from the young actors. Erin, played by Shannon Barnes, was on point, and effective. I believed her character and she crossed that line into psychopathy with expertise and genuinely thought she was attractive and repulsive in the same shot. Not an easy feat for any actor.
Robert, played by Christian Carrigan, I liked that earnest, ‘80s innocent tone. A timid boy who has a coming-of-age relationship with a dominant girl. She likes him for his weakness. She likes him for her strength. It played believable, given the wild premise.
I also liked the two Quadrant doctors, although Meg could have come off as more menacing, even though she was supposed to be cured, so it is a hard needle to thread. Still well played.
I liked the execution of the concept. The attempt to ‘supernaturalize virtual reality’ is a kind of subgenre, as is the supernaturalizing of psychology and metaphor in virtual reality. Another example of this kind of movie would be Videoverse (Cassex, 2021). Consequently, another Full Moon Feature and another movie I recommend. And last year’s Aimee: The Visitor (2023). It would make a killer triple bill.
I also really liked the bloody graphics and monsters. Very effective looking and the murder sequences were very VR but done with emotional weight by the actors playing the victims and murderers alike.
I also liked the short run time. I used to like this about older horror movies, like White Zombie, where the shorter run time, matched with tight story and action and dread, got you there and back without that long 2nd half, the 2nd act before the climax, where you feel you have to just overly complicate things just to interlink some b or c or d character storyline or to go in some totally different direction, which is where most movies, honestly, go off the rails.
Quadrant stayed the course, and for that, it succeeds.
Quadrant Downers:
Charles Band movies are not known for their big budgets or music, but I felt some more attention to the music might have heightened the production further.
I suppose the confrontation at the end could have been heightened in significance with more backstory about Meg. More hints. Minor downer.
Overall, I enjoyed this film’s clear concept, crisp execution and focus on Erin’s maniacal interest in Jack the Ripper. Motivations and conclusions were inevitable but compelling and fulfilling. On behalf of Severed Cinema, I recommend hardily that you see Quadrant now. Old Leather Apron will be waiting for you there, in the Quadrant, to take your fears away! Enjoy!
Directed by: Charles Band
Written by: C. Courtney Joyner
Produced by: Charles Band
Cinematography by: Thomas L. Callaway
Edited by: Alex Nicolaou
Music by: Jonathan Walter
Special Effects by: Alan Tuskes
Cast: Shannon Barnes, Christian Carrigan, Emma Reinagel, Rickard Claeson, Kaylene Snarsky, Kristephan Warren-Stevens
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 13min
Studio: Full Moon Empire, Pulp Noir
Distribution: Full Moon Features