CARRIERS

I watched this one the other day. It was yet another DVD that I acquired in a  trade with a fellow comic book collector. CARRIERS is not a film I would have paid to see in the theater nor would I have purchased the DVD. But since I got it in trade, I figured I'd watch it and throw it out on eBay.

CARRIERS is one grim little film. The story takes place in what appears to be the near future in which an extremely deadly and highly communicable disease has killed off much of the population of the United States. The origins of this disease and how it is spread is never made entirely clear. The film begins with the disease already widespread with devastating effects. 

The story centers around a group of four young people (two men who are brothers and two unrelated women) traveling cross country on their way to a coastal community where the brothers spent much of their childhood. They have strict rules about interacting with any infected persons they might encounter. The rules are pretty simple and straightforward: if you're sick, you're dead and we leave you behind. 

The foursome encounter several different survivors of the plague along the way and each interaction takes it's toll on the group. In the end, two of the four are dead and only one man and one woman make it to the beach (Port Aransas, by the way, according to the credits).

I must confess that I was totally unfamiliar with any of the performers in this film except for Chris Pine, who plays one of the brothers and I only know him because he starred as James T. Kirk in the recent STAR TREK reboot. CARRIERS is a low-budget film shot on location in Texas and New Mexico. It uses the vast landscapes and wide open spaces to emphasize the desolation the characters are experiencing. With a PG-13 rating, the effects and shock value is not as high as one would find in a similar R-rated film.

Apparently CARRIERS was filmed several years ago and sat on a shelf at Paramount for quite some time before being given a very short theatrical release after which the film went straight to DVD. It's not a bad film but it's so grim and depressing you have to think twice about investing 90 minutes of your time to watch it.