Saturday Scream Queen: Jennifer Carpenter

Born in Kentucky in 1979, Jennifer Carpenter trained at New York City's famous Julliard School, making her professional acting debut on Broadway in 2002. Her first films ro9les were in dramas about New Yorkers in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks ("People Are Dead" in 2002 and "Ash Wednesday" in 2003), and in 2005 she made her had her first horror movie appearances in 2005, with starring roles in "Lethal Eviction" and "The Exorcism of Emily Rose."

In 2006, Carpenter was cast as the foul-mouthed sister-by-adoption and law enforcement colleague of the title character in "Dexter." This long-running mystery television series has lots of horror overtones, as its main character is a psychopath who was molded by his adopted father to be as close to a force for good as he could possibly become, and who become a serial killer who targets serial killers, both identifying them and covering his tracks through his job as a police scientist. Carpenter remains a fixture of the series, which has been renewed by Showtime through 2013.

When not working on the series, Carpenter has continued to make movies, including the chillers "Quarantine" (2008), "The Factory" (2008), and "Gone" (2011).

Carpenter recently completed work on "The Occult," a thriller about members of a religious sect who are being murdered to bring about a prophecy. No firm release date has been set, but it will likely be released around the middle of 2013.

'Quarantine' brings nothing new to the screen

Quarantine (2008)
Starring: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short, Rade Serbedzija and Greg Germann
Director: John Eric Dowdle
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A television reporter and her cameraman (Carpenter and Harris) are trapped in an apartment building with a dozen other people who are being turned into rabid killers by a strange disease.


"Quarantine" is a predictable monster/zombie movie that is set apart somewhat by the clever device of having the camera recording the events present within the story, with the camera operator being one of the characters. It's a film that will hold your attention with a number of good scares and plenty of intensity, but it won't offer a single surprise if you're a seasoned horror movie watcher. (And, given the film's R-rating, I don't think the audience will have many in it who haven't seen this kind of story half a dozen times before.

The actors all do decent jobs, but they can't do anything about the fact that there isn't anything in this film you haven't seen before. (The lack originality of the film is even more profound that it seems on the surface, as it's an American remake of Spanish film from 2007 titled "[REC]").