Carriers may veer from the fast-passed, zombie-filled plot line I wrongfully assumed was coming after first seeing the trailer (I repeat, there are no zombies), which it is all the better for in the end. By doing so, it becomes a heart wrenching film that makes the viewer question what they may be willing to do to survive.
Following an outbreak that has killed most of the human population, 2 brothers, Danny and Brian (Chris Pine and Lou Taylor Pucci) decide to act on their last hope by taking Brian’s girlfriend, Bobby (Piper Perabo), and Danny’s friend, Kate (Emily VanCamp), on a road trip across the country to a place from their past that they believe will be unaffected by the spread of the disease. All they have to do is get there.
Shying away from the violence and gore of the usual horror film, Carriers decides to try to affect the audience in a grander way. Okay, there are some violent outbursts, but they are always necessary and not just to see what goes into rigging a head to explode… Anyway, what I am getting at is that Carriers is not the film relying on terrifying the audience with monsters and terror, but with our own psychological fears. First of all, the disease is never really explained. There is a little vague blurb about it in the beginning, but not enough to get comfortable with it. There are no overly scientific explanations, people with the disease show certain signs and have a few visible markers, but there is no puzzle being put together in order to find the cure. The disease just is, and that’s even scarier. What’s more is that there are few deaths on screen. In other words, the causes for the deaths are shown, but not the actual deaths themselves, which in a weird way seems worse because it is more uncomfortable. Especially because when those characters are out of sight, they aren’t out of mind. Instead, the question of what happens to them remains, and more often than not, their circumstances are dire, full of suffering and eventual death alone. What this film does show is the loss of hope, which becomes almost tangible. And this is worse than any death scene they could have shot.
With only having a disease that is not fully understandable as it blankets everything, it’s easy to try to find something else in this film to peg as the villain. However, it is too hard to do this with any individual character. For one thing, there is no one that I can point my finger at and scream “Evil! You’re Evil!” because everyone’s actions are warranted. They may not seem like the noblest thing to do, but they are necessary to survive, which is hard to fault someone for when it gets down to it. Okay, maybe the men in the safety suits are pretty bad, but no matter how horrible their actions are, it’s still possible to see why they do what they do.
As I delved deeper into a depression as the film progressed, I was slightly upset that the ending was not the one I was hoping for, but it does fit perfectly with the mood of the overall story arc, making it hard to see any ending that would have actually worked better. As the credits roll, the audience is again forced to wonder what will become of the people left in this world, which is a scary thing to think about in this dreary look at the degradation of humanity’s heath, morals, and worse of all, the human spirit.
Final Grade: B
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