The Carrier

Aside from the first couple of minutes (which were actually fairly promising, as a mother and her son try to escape London and the soldiers who were shooting anyone trying to get out of the city after the outbreak of a deadly disease) I was confused from the very beginning of this movie. Made in 2015, it depicts a global pandemic that makes the Covid-19 pandemic look minor league. This disease is caused by resistance to over-prescribed antibiotics, has no cure or treatment, begins by disfiguring those who get infected and then eventually kills everyone it touches. That much was clear - but what confused me was the plane. Not because all travel in and out of the UK and all flights were prohibited. I get that there are still planes and some people will be able to access them no matter what. But why this particular group. The captain, Tobias (Edmund Kingsley) said that he had a "select" group of passengers. But why? In what way? They really didn't seem all that "select" to me. So I was confused by - why these people, in this plane and at this time? And that was never really clarified.

But beyond that, it just wasn't an especially interesting or original movie. The description makes you think that there's going to be some sort of outbreak on the plane that makes the flight horrific, but really most of the action takes place once the plane lands to refuel and gets attacked by the infected - and even the attacks are dealt with fairly easily. I will say that I was intrigued by the character of Eric (Joe Dixon.) He was clearly being portrayed as the "bad guy" but there were other times when he was quite relatable, and even his motives at times seemed quite noble - basically - "you can't go anywhere because you'll infect anyone.) Aside from him, though, none of the characters were especially interesting. As far as the story goes, I didn't understand the need for the second plane and the flirtatious exchanges between Tobias and the other (female) pilot. The story didn't need that. And, sure, a few people die - you expect that - but while it portrayed (mostly through the dialogue of the characters) a world gone completely to hell, frankly, with bodies being burned in the open and a desperate and frightened population, it just seemed to be lacking much in the way of real intensity, and it ended up being a movie I could watch (thankfully it's fairly short) but not really get engrossed in. (4/10)

There are some interesting little set pieces here that, at the very least, keep the watcher interested. However the big problem is that the writers have a basic concept of 'plague on a plane' and no idea of how to flesh out the story, the characters or how to end the film.

The action is wooden, the character motivations are strange, to say the least, random things happen like people turn up to shoot at people and then just disappear.

However the scene with 'the arm' is quite harrowing, the opening scene is full of suspense and the counter play with the other pilot is well done. Shame they couldn't knit it all together.

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.

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

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.