FilmSnobReviews

Title: Cargo
Rating: TV-MA
Director: Ben Howling, Yolanda Ramake
Starring: Martin Freeman, Anthony Hayes, Susie Porter, Caren Pistorius
Runtime: 1hr 45min

What It Is: Sometime after the initiation of the zombie apocalypse, all goes to hell when couple Andy and Kay (Freeman and Porter) are bitten. When Kay dies, Andy is left with forty-eight hours left in his life before turning to find a suitable guardian for his infant daughter Rosie.

What We Think: The movie Here Alone (which also happens to be on Netflix) is a forgettable but technically satisfactory zombie film with an interesting idea here and there. I wouldn’t exactly recommend it, but I would definitely recommend it over Cargo, a similar film with similar circumstances and VERY similar (if not weaker and less believable) antagonistic forces. Nowadays the whole zombie apocalypse shtick is getting old, considering a lot of threats the characters face are due to an abundant amount of coincidentally evil people who are out to reek havoc in a world in which that doesn’t do anyone any good for. That’s the situation here. The characters that are evil are really evil, and the characters that are good are… good, I guess, if not on the unimpressionable side, speaking mostly for the male characters. Speaking of which—the bright side to this dark drama can be found within the women’s performances. I’m not sure if this is because one of the directors is female, but all in all the women characters have (comparatively) more depth to them. Not to say that the writing is all there, because overall it’s not, but they do some interesting things with the women that the male characters seem to be lacking. Otherwise, the movie is so-so in its presentation with some nice drone shots, serviceable cinematography, and a rather dull score.

Our Grade: D+, Some moments are sort of redeeming and the production design works (especially since it takes place in beautiful Australia), but the cliches bog the whole thing down… Watch this if you want something to lull you to sleep, with a lackluster main performance on Freeman’s part (which is unfortunate, because he can act) and strange, laughable editing decisions in which there are sudden, jarring cuts. There’s nothing really to be seen here that other zombie-apocalypse media hasn’t already covered before, making me think that maybe now’s the time to put this trend to rest for a while.