Carriers

Carriers started off as a good movie. We're introduced to 2 couples who are travelling around in a post apocalyptic USA. It appears there's been a viral epidemic. The 4 travelers have strict rules on survival. If you catch the virus, you are dead. It's a slow and painful death that's akin to influenza meets terminal hemoptysis.

The virus outbreak, cause and starting time is unknown. The director does not feel as though we need an introduction or back story. Great, this is inspired and in the realms of great cyberpunk writing. No explanation needed. We just get ourselves right in the story and away we go!

However, the story then starts to take a downhill decent after one of the group gets infected from a child in a scene that's just cheezy Hollywood. Other scenes are a lot more gritter and we get the idea that this is a survival thriller. If it continued in the vein of forcing the viewer to decide if the means justify the ends in strict survival, maybe this movie would have been a lot more convincing. Instead the last 1/2 hour's suspense is wasted on cheesy memory cam back flashes in the final moments of the movie. The premises of the movie are dark and pessimistic. As such the director ought to have cut short the movie to end on such a note to explain, 'in a world filled with death, our lives are hollow, we cannot seek to create a dream when our soul is dead'. Had it come to this conclusion, it would have been a lot more satisfying. We're left with back-flash and voice-over cheese in a scenario that begs to differ with the hard choices made. Disappointing.