The Carrier

I'm not sure why I'm writing this review. I've spent far too much time on this film already. Perhaps I just want to warn people that this is not a very entertaining film and not just because of the grim subject matter.

This sounded mildly intriguing so we gave it a whirl. How I wish we hadn't. It started off OK, but quickly revealed itself as a very cheaply-made straight-to-video formula horror/thriller. It looked as though it may have been a pilot for a TV serial that never got made (can't think why). Most of the characters are either useless and unreliable or just plain psychos, like 'Eric' who goes around wrecking the group's chances of survival. According to the end credits, it was filmed 'around the back of B&Q in Basildon' or something like that. Avoid.

The idea had potential, but I think it just missed for me. The pandemic has taught us that people WOULD in fact be idiots, and try and jump on a plane despite the risk to others. So the very idea of this film is a solid one.

The problem is the characters were bland and one dimensional, and I don't feel the film had any real focus, or real ending. Like there were some very good ideas going on, but they needed developing more, and the film needed more focus on deciding what it wanted to be. It started off very reasonable, but then just went flat.

The other issue I had is the acting was a little all over the place. Some points seemed overacted, where as other actors felt flat/stiff. I wish the film had more going for it, because the concept is a good one.

It was so annoying that everyone was acting stupid, I wanted to punch my screen watching this!

The world is going to hell in an antibiotic-resistant- plague powered hand cart. Soldiers are shooting people dead on the street and the suburban houses of the infected are set a blaze.

A bunch of people manage to get aboard a plane and make a dash for it. Locked in to a confided environment, with the potential of infection aboard and the world burning below, this is dynamite.

Production, acting and writing are sufficient to carry all this off and is very tense and moving in places.

Happy days?

No. The problem with this film is the plot. To unfold the way it does the characters have to make one shockingly ill-thought out choice after another. You know in horror films when the guy goes down in to the cellar on his own just to find out what that scrapping noise is? Well every single character in this film does this, about every six minutes.

This sounds nit-picky for what is essentially a sci-fi film; but it is so annoying it distracts from the film.

"Hey Gary I'm just going to pop out and have a chat with this guy who has been trying to kill us for the last twenty minutes."

"Right-oh Fred, want to take this gun with you mate?"

"No I'm sure it will be fine. Just sneeze into my mouth for good luck"

The ending reaches an appropriate climax but I was left wondering what was the point in it all.

Good acting and production hung on a distorted framework.