Carriers

**1/2 – Seeing as this 2009 independent film isn’t really a horror film or a thriller and doesn’t have any action in it, I suppose it is best categorized as a sci-fi drama. It is very much like how I’d imagine “28 Days Later” would be with all the horror elements completely stripped from it. In fact, I think the parallels to “28 Days Later” are very apt, as both films deal with a small group of people who are trying to get to a destination while avoiding the infection that is spreading throughout the population. Where these movies are fundamentally different, though, is in the nature of the infection. “28 Days Later” had a highly contagious virus that almost immediately turned its victim into a slobbering beast that then tried to infect as many people as possible by attacking and chewing on them. On the other hand, “Carriers” portrays a similarly highly virulent disease. However, it is one that doesn’t turn its prey into zombie-like creatures but instead just slowly weakens and kills them over a period of days or weeks. While that certainly seems more realistic than the former option, it also means that there is not a whole heck of a lot going on in this movie. About the most exciting part of it was one of the lead characters getting attacked by a dog and fending it off with a shotgun. So, while I can certainly commend the movie for its realism and its avoidance of the theme of zombie-like creatures that is so common in these kind of movies nowadays, it achieves this by forfeiting a great deal of entertainment value.