Whether the world ends by zombie outbreak, giant monster attack or some other calamity yet to be determined, there will at least be a decent record of how the apocalypse went down courtesy of some hapless dude with a video camera. “Quarantine,” a quickie remake of the 2007 Spanish film “[Rec],” follows in the tradition of “Cloverfield,” “Diary of the Dead” and those puff pieces on the six o’clock news to bring us an up-close chronicle of some sort of zombie-esque infection in a rundown Los Angeles apartment building. But even with all the murderous ghouls jumping out from shadowy hallways and zombie dogs spilling out of elevators, “Quarantine” never gets as scary as it should. It instead serves as a kind of checklist for the last five years’ worth of horror movies.

In fact, it might be helpful to start keeping your own checklist as the movie begins. If you’ve got “creepy senior citizen who turns into a monster” on there, give yourself five points, as that’s the first thing television reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) encounters the night she and her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) shadow some Los Angeles firefighters. The monstrous old lady proceeds to take a bite out of an unsuspecting police officer, and soon enough, the whole building is thrown into chaos. No-nonsense firefighter Jake (Jay Hernandez) tries to get everyone outside, but the CDC and the feds have sealed off the building, fearing an outbreak of some kind of virus that turns regular people into fast-moving, slightly cannibalistic zombie types.

Amidst all the chaos, Angela orders Scott to film everything, ostensibly an exercise of their First Amendment rights, but mostly because there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise. To his credit, director John Erick Dowdle does a good job with the gimmick, and the film feels, for the most part, like footage found on a news camera. But once the tenants start becoming victims and the monsters start running around, “Quarantine” loses whatever natural feel it might have had and turns into a laundry list of recent horror clichés. Fast-moving zombies? Check. Children turned into monsters? Got it. Night vision sequences? Yup, got those, too.

“Quarantine” never builds the sort of dread-filled momentum it needs. Everything, from the jump scares to the plot twists, is telegraphed far in advance, and the few unexpected moments in the movie add up to not much, at all. The government quarantine plot, along with all the inky black hallways and secret rooms in the apartment building, should lend themselves to an atmosphere of high tension and creepy claustrophobia, but Dowdle never makes it work. The pacing is quick and the camera moves fast, but there’s never a sense of urgency or care for any of the characters, other than using the number of survivors to figure out how close the movie is to ending. Sometimes, things get just plain silly, and there are more than a few moments of cringe-worthy dialogue.

Dowdle and his brother Drew co-wrote the screenplay, which is at least straightforward in its intentions. The tenants are all zombie fodder more deserving of short descriptions than names. There’s the Scared Mother, the Immigrants Who Can’t Speak English, the Angry Drunk and so on. Jennifer Carpenter starts the movie out more like a giddy teenager than a grown woman. Once the blood starts flowing, she’s a calm, composed reporter, but it’s not long before she’s a weeping mess. It’s a disappointing turn, especially since Carpenter showed in 2005’s “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” that she can do horror extremely well.

Expecting a fair amount of originality from a remake is a ridiculous request, though, and “Quarantine” seems content to tread in the mediocre end of the horror pool. That “Quarantine” is perfectly adequate at being middle-of-the road is neither a blessing nor a curse. It’s an unremarkable, mostly unnecessary film (why not just release “[Rec]” in America, already?), a bit like the gruesome footage Scott spends the movie shooting. After all, once the zombies take over, who’s going to be watching movies, anyway?