company: Paramount Vantage
year: 2009
runtime: 84′
country: United States
directors: Alex and David Pastor
cast: Lou Taylor Pucci, Chris Pine,
Piper Parabo, Emily VanCamp
writers: Alex and David Pastor
cinematographer: Benoit Debie
music: Peter Nashel
dvd company: Paramount Home Video
release date: December 29, 2009
retail price: $19.99
disc details: Region 1 / NTSC / single layer
video: progressive / 2.35:1 anamorphic
audio: Dolby Digital (5.1 English, 2.0 Spanish)
subtitles: English, Spanish, French
order this film from Amazon.com
Plot: The world is devastated by an unstoppable plague that leaves everyone who contracts it dead in its wake. Four young people travel the backroads of the southwest, headed for the safety of an isolated beach motel on the Gulf Coast while following a five-step plan to avoid infection.
Early advertising for Carriers, which received a disparagingly limited theatrical release and is now making its debut on home video, passed it off as a topical shocker about a lethal outbreak of the avian flu while the latest trailer makes it appear to be just another zombie-pocalypse. “The only thing more dangerous than the disease . . . are the carriers,” it says before a seemingly dead man’s eyes burst open. It’s a pity that Paramount Vantage couldn’t think of a more effective (and honest) manner of advertising the film, as Carriers has nothing to do with either the avian flu or roving hordes of the undead.
The truth of the matter is this: Carriers is quite simply one of the best films about the death of man ever produced – a stripped down and intelligent character driven apocalypse picture that creates a palpable sense of existential dread without resorting to gross-out violence or cheap thrills.
The Pastor brothers, a duo of Spanish film-makers who pull double duty here as both writers and directors, play their story as a thematic homage to classic end-of-the-world vehicles of the past and wisely avoid the contrivances of the action-packed and empty headed post-Mad Max thrill fests that now dominate the genre. The focus of Carriers is squarely on its main characters, all of whom the Pastor brothers lend considerable depth and none of whom fall into the expected teenaged monster-bait stereotype.
Carriers eschews back story about the plague itself, leaving its menace enigmatic and negating the need for any kind of bloated scientific discourse on the subject. What is shown of its aftermath is enough to convince of its destructive potential – emptied city streets, abandoned CDC encampments, and waste disposal trucks piled high with body bags. As dangerous as the plague itself are those it has left behind and clinging to survival, as evidenced by the sight of a murdered man crucified on a farmhouse windmill with a sign – “chinks brought it” – draped across his chest.
In-fighting among clusters of humanity has provided the primary dramatic momentum for apocalypse films since Arch Obeler’s Five from 1951, with man’s inability to deal with himself often proving far more deadly than the overriding threat of radiation sickness, flesh-eating zombies, etc. Carriers takes the opportunity to turn that convention on its head in one scene, in which disagreement among a band of plastic-wrapped gun-toting survivalists allows for the escape of our main cast. Such quarreling will surely mean the end of that group, but our heroes will live to drive another day.
The tension among our protagonists results from their own humanity. Allowing a father (Christopher Meloni in a big supporting role) and his infected daughter to travel with them in the plastic and duct-tape sealed back of an SUV invites the virus into the presumed safety of their group. It predictably spreads, giving the uninfected no choice but to make necessary (but no less horrific for their necessity) decisions – to leave sick friends to die on the side of the road, and worse. When the final survivors reach their final destination they are despondent, their humanity crushed by what came before, and hardly in a position to rebuild the foundations of civilization. They wander the ruins, remembering what was while coming to terms with what is – waiting for the ever-dimmer flame of mankind to snuff itself out.
The Pastor brothers, in an interview with Twitchfilm, have provided some insight into their inspirations here – John Wyndham’s superior disaster novel The Day of the Triffids and Geoff Murphy’s inconsistent but undeniably haunting The Quiet Earth. Their film happily reminds of the best moments from scores of its apocalyptic predecessors (The Last Man on Earth, The World The Flesh and The Devil, Dawn of the Dead and more) while managing to far surpass many of them in its overall effectiveness. To take a premise that’s been part of cinema DNA for the better part of the past 80 years and mold such a fresh, effective dramatic thriller from it is no small task, but the Pastor brothers have done so with style to spare. Keep an eye on these guys – if there’s any fairness in the world then they’re going places.
I don’t know quite what I was expecting from Paramount’s DVD issue of Carriers (no Blu-ray is scheduled at present), though after their cut-rate theatrical release it couldn’t have been much. They’re single layer disc certainly meets those minimal expectations, but its a far cry from the appreciative home video release we might have hoped for.
Carriers is presented in the original scope 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio in a good 16:9 enhanceed and progressive transfer. Detail is relatively strong and the colors and contrast are very representative of how the film looked when it played theatrically. There’s a hint of edge enhancement throughout, but otherwise I have no complaints. The single layer encode is likewise solid, 4 gigs being more than enough for the short (84′) film. The primary audio option is a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround English track, which does a fine job capturing the subtle sound design. A Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo Spanish dub is also included, as are subtitles in English, Spanish, and French.
And that, I’m sad to say, is it. No commentary track, no interviews, not even an original theatrical trailer. The only supplements are a handful of previews for other Paramount titles – Wrong Turn at Tahoe, G. I. Joe, and the reboot of Star Trek – and a short spot against tobacco products featuring a baby in an SUV being molested by bubbles floating in from around the world. None of it has anything to do with Carriers, aside from the cross-promotion of lead Chris Pine’s turn as Captain Kirk in Star Trek. At least the movie looks and sounds good.
The Pastor brothers have crafted something special here, and it definitely deserves to be seen. Paramount Home Video’s DVD release leaves a bad taste in this reviewer’s mouth, but those who have been waiting patiently to get a crack at the film (and there are many) now have the opportunity to do so. The $19.99 price tag is steep but expected, and Amazon is already selling the title at 25% below retail. The DVD gets my begrudging recommendation, given that it’s the only way to see the film at present – Carriers itself is a must-see.
There have been no small number of film adaptations, legitimate and otherwise, of Richard Matheson’s 1954 science fiction horror novel I Am Legend, from the stark Italian-American co-production The Last Man on Earth in 1964 to the dreadful Will Smith vehicle of a few years past, but this Walter Seltzer (Soylent Green) production from 1971 may be my favorite even as it takes considerable liberties with the source. Charlton Heston is as big as ever as the requisite last man, the survivor of a modern plague that has decimated the world’s population and left civilization in ruin, but as the tagline is quick to point out, “The last man alive… is not alone!”
