Movie review: Carriers

[pslasher]

I took the risk and watched Carriers.  As expected, when I told my husband that it was a zombie film (because I thought it was) he said "What?  Why on earth would you get that?" because he knows I don't do horror movies (I don't know what he's going to do when I eventually bring home Supernatural.  He'll probably refuse to watch it with me).  I said "Well, it has Chris Pine in it," and he said "So we're watching everything with Chris Pine in it now?" and I said "Yep.  And everything with Karl Urban, and then maybe  Zoe Saldana and Anton Yelchin and..."  Lol, I did warn him when we first signed up!

Carriers turned out to be far less of a zombie movie than I expected.  It was indeed this scary:
 

Thanks for the GIF cards_slash!  Though now that I know what is going on in that scene that GIF is a little less appealing.  There were a few spots where I jumped a little, but honestly Doom is a scarier movie, with honestly startling monsters jumping out and tearing people apart.  However, Carriers is depressing.  It's a post-apocalyptic world where a highly infectious virus has wiped out most of the population, and left everyone paranoid.  It's you or them, and any kindness you show could cost you your life.  It poses the question of how far you would go to protect your own life.  Would you deny someone else help, even if it meant they would die?  Would you kill someone if you thought they might be infected?  Not light, fun entertaining stuff.

There was also the matter of believable character choices.  We kept saying "Why aren't they wearing their masks?"  "Don't touch that!"  and "Why don't they find a place in the woods to settle down?  Why do they have to keep driving?"  So... that helped me keep some distance from the movie too.

Chris' character is a  bit of an ass in this.  He's sort of the leader of the group, the one that keeps them going and enforces the rules, even when it's difficult.  I liked the cockiness at first, with all the joking around and kissing his girlfriend.  He's just cute no matter what he's doing.  But eventually I came to see the attitude as a defense mechanism resulting from the difficult choices and life.  He plays the character well, and got me actually sort of emotionally involved with the story.

Chris did a fantastic job in Carriers, but it's not a movie I really want to watch again.  Though I'll probably make use of that GIF again!

Comments

[lindmere.livejournal.com]

A movie would have to be pretty shitty to invalidate that GIF.

But yeah, I'm kind of done with the fake apocalypse for a while--The Road burned it out of me. Oh my god that was a dark and horrible (albeit well-made) movie.

I really appreciate that Chris can play bad guys and dicks, and tends to humanize both. It gives his characters a lot of depth and--

[sorry, I keep staring at the way the denim creases]

[thalialunacy.livejournal.com]

So maybe I won't get nightmares from it? >.>