Carriers (2009) Directed by Àlex and David Pastor. With Chris Pine, Piper Perabo, Lou Taylor Pucci and Emily VanCamp.
Writer-director duo Àlex and David Pastor’s Carriers plays like a middling episode of The Walking Dead, sans zombies. The world has gone to hell, thanks to a viral pandemic that has killed nearly everyone except a hot-headed Chris Pine, his brother and their girlfriends. We meet them (in oddly upbeat spirits) on the road, driving to wherever, whereby they encounter a stranger and his infected daughter. Here, they face the first of a series of dilemmas that stitch together the ‘plot’. Unlike the seemingly endless barrage of tedium that is The Walking Dead, at least with this, it’s 84mins and out.
Just like the TV show (TWD was released a year after this), the film is full of those kind of acting performances – either really mad or really sad. You know the kind that I mean, actors being all actory, often overacting just to ensure we understand the gravity of the situation. Thanks to his lead role in Star Trek (which was presumably shot before this) Chris Pine’s name wields star power. I can’t even say there’s anything remarkably terrible going on here, it’s just all terribly unremarkable; desolate roads, deserted suburban areas, the occasional bloody corpse…
The direction is solid enough, although there’s more recycling in the writing than found in your average bottle bank. The plot is simply a series of visits to various sites, which culminates without any surprises. There’s also plenty of characters saying and doing things they’d only ever do or say in a movie…and they aren’t nearly careful enough around the infected. It gives the impression that the plot needs them to get infected. This creates an audience detachment that cuts our ties with being able to care.
Carriers is that film you watch and almost completely forget within an hour. Nothing in it veers off the beaten track of a thousand other films and television shows. That might be enough for some, but don’t be surprised to find yourself having arrived at the finale before the film itself gets there. 2/5
Gareth Rhodes Film Reviews 
Well, I’ll steer clear of this one!
Re. TWD, I strongly suggest to read the comics, they are way better!
Yes, I really should get round to that. I liked the first season, but it jumped the shark a long time ago. Thanks for reading.
To me the show is just bad fan fiction, I remember being quite excited by the news that Frank Darabont was making a TV-show from one of my favorite comics… such a let down after the season 1 finale…
I agree. Much of the content feels very prescribed. I also hated how they kept having long montage sequences, played out with a melancholic acoustic guitar led track in nearly every episode of the 3rd season. I can’t believe I actually followed it that far.
What’s more frustrating is that so many people still consider it to be the one of the best things on television. *sighs
yeah, I know, it is frustrating especially when good shows end up cancelled because of low ratings
Indeed. Take Joss Whedon’s Firefly, for example. A show that had such depths of potential. I’m still not over it, even though they gave us Serenity.
you read my mind! I was thinking exactly that.
Reblogged this on Hilbonix Movie Reviews.
Thanks for the warning!!!
You’re welcome. I was too tired to watch anything challenging, this afternoon. Still, I was hoping for much better. It holds 63% on the Tomatometer.
Sounds boring. ‘Bad’ I can handle – it’s like a genre with its own rewards. Whereas ‘boring’ is like a mosquito trapped in your ears.
Thanks for the heads-up. : D
Laughing at “mosquito trapped in your ears”. You’re absolutely right, the word ‘boring’ sums it up.
That’s too bad. I don’t know how such mediocre films keep getting bad. I agree with above statements – I’d rather see someone try hard, risk something, and end up with a failure than another movie that’s just forgettable.
Agreed. It’s so much easier to follow a blueprint, than it is to design something new. Horror films especially (which this kind of is), are often guilty of resting on their genre laurels.