Carriers

3.5/5

Carriers is one of those disease out break films, it does not actually give you much detail about the disease, but you just know there is no cure and it has spread rather quickly. We basically start the film in a car with four young people, two brothers Danny and Brian played by Lou Taylor Pucci and Chris Pine and two girls Bobby and Kate played by Piper Perabo and Emily Va Camp with Perabo being Pine's girl. We find out they are headed somewhere to get away from the outbreak. Of course they come across a broken down car with a father and daughter and the daughter we see is infected. Things do not look good right about now.

So what sets this film aside from the similar ones in this genre? This had less gore and it didn't have hundreds of disease infested people running around trying to kill everyone. This was more of a slow burn, character study of people in this terrible situation. And for the most part it all really worked. The horror element was the situation they were faced with and the tough decisions that followed. You really do not want to be in their situation, and you feel for these people. They are trying to avoid this disease but it is around each corner, and the decisions they are faced with are tough ones. You do not want to leave anyone behind, you don't want to risk getting infected.

The script was very solid, aside from a few little flaws it worked pretty well. It isn't until later on that you get a feel for the relationship between the two brothers and it would have been better if they had really played this more from the beginning. Chris Pine plays a-hole to a T, you don't like him too much at first but you can understand his motives and you do actually like him later on. Piper Perabo should take on more roles like this, she is very likable and a strong actress. You feel for her situation and as things progress you really feel that pain. Lou Taylor Pucci was the stand out for me, he really grew as a character in this and you do relate to him. He put on a great performance here, and I felt he probably had the toughest role to play. The weakest of the four was Emily Van Camp but that isn't to say she wasn't good, she was good just not great. And keep an eye out for Christopher Meloni in a small role, he can do no wrong.

This was a really strong effort in my opinion and I really liked this film and the fact that while the material isn't new what they tried to do was. The direction by Alex and David Pastor is rather impressive, they also wrote the film and I'll be keeping my eye out from more from them. I thought it was shot really well, the use of colour and location was spot on for this type of film. They made all these elements work, and while this film certainly wont be everyones cup of tea it certainly was mine.