Carriers

An apocalyptic tale of a flesh-dissolving virus that has plagued the United States and now has left civilization to turn on each other.  Two brothers Brain (Chris Pine) and Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci) and their girlfriends head on a post-apocalyptic road trip to the coast through a barren world of corpses. As the viral pandemic sweeps through the country, they soon realise that their companionship comes to question when they have to decide how far will they go to survive the epidemic chaos. Written and directed by David Pastor and Àlex Pastor, Carriers (2009) shows how driving through the empty post-apocalyptic freeways with your family, buddies or partners may seem ideal, but will soon discover that the your sibling next to you and your partner behind may be far more dangerous than any airborne pathogen. Do you have what it takes to have the pressure of making the difficult decisions in order to keep everyone alive or worse, do you have the courage to do what must be done if your sibling or partner get infected.

The four survivors reach the deserted roads, far away from major cities and from possibly infected individuals. The group make a desperate attempt to head to a safe haven where they can wait for the viral pandemic to die out. However, an unexpected detour takes the group to one grisly encounter to another, with dwindling supplies and running low on fuel. The group soon realise that in world where law and order is in utter disarray no one will help them. Anyone can be a threat from suspicious travellers, military personnel gone rouge to gun wielding militias. Carriers presents a very bleak future of how helpless civilisation can be when airborne pandemic plagues the planet and showing he realistic perception of what humanity will do during the outbreak and aftermath.

With the airborne lethal sickness a constant threat, the real unpleasant truth is that breaking down or petrol shortages on the road mean dealing with other possibly-infected strangers. These moments not only give such visceral thrills and suspense, but it makes you question your own moral choices. With that in your thoughts you are constantly left with a moral ambiguity, which I feel is a fantastic element to the film. However, the choices the characters make doesn't really seem to have much of an impact and the detours they make lead to nothing. This all makes it just pointless, so the effective motor of suspense begins to lose power sadly.

Carriers is still a very decent post-apocalyptic horror with a brilliant unique touch of a road movie as its core theme. However John Hillcoat’s The Road starring Viggo Mortensen's very much identical film was released the same year but Mortensen's The Road is a far superior film and highly praised by critics. This is possibly the reason why Carriers went so far under the radar. However, if you're a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre Carriers is a well-crafted and thrillingly gripping horror with characters plagued by moral uncertainty.