Carriers is a low-budget horror movie starring Chris Pine. The world, or at least the USA, is decimated by a killer virus. A small group of survivors, including two siblings with opposite personalities, are carjacking their way across America to a place of childhood significance, relying on a list of self-made rules to avoid infection. However about fifteen minutes in, during an encounter with a mysterious doctor, it becomes clear that this is not simply
Zombieland minus the zombies - it's Zombieland re-imagined by
Nevil Shute. The list of rules is also much shorter and they mainly involve bleach.
This is also a film that is hard to classify - it's certainly not a feelgood comedy! However while there are moments of action, suspense and horror they take second place to a drama in which desperate choices are made - and there's no guarantee that everything will turn out all right. The acting is therefore crucial and all four leads are good: Lou Taylor Pucci and Chris Pine play off each other well as brothers; Piper Perabo is convincing in her role and Emily VanCamp is slightly scary and perfectly understated. I was also impressed by how little the film relies on overt CGI: apart from a few eyes with infected irises I didn't spot any CGI shots. Of course there could have been any number of covert CGI uses.
I was impressed by the group of excitable orange-suited RailTrack engineers who were making a fuss over Bittern (a sister locomotive to Mallard) on a rare excursion down south.
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