The Carrier (1988)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Jake (Gregory Fortescue) lives in a small mountain town where he's pretty much an outcast due to people believing that he murdered his parents. One day this small town because victim to some sort of disease or virus that is spreading around and will burn a person to death if they catch it. What people don't know is that it's Jake who is the carrier.
If you grew up watching horror films in the 1980s then you know there were dozens if not hundreds of low-budget films that lacked any sort of creativity so usually those films just gave us mindless killings, gore or a bunch of sex and nudity. THE CARRIER is a film that has a small cult following to it and after watching the film it's easy to see why. If you're looking for some sort of violent or gory movie then this certainly isn't for you. While there are certainly some flaws here there's no question that the film at least has some creative moments.
What impressed me the most about THE CARRIER is the fact that it had a very small budget yet it uses the lack of money to build something creative and original. The idea of a virus going around and killing people is an interesting thing to do but having one carrier just added to the entertainment. What I loved about the film is that it had no money but it was creative in the way this small town had to fight against the disease. The costumes look very cheap and that's a plus because it's exactly what you'd expect a homemade costume to look like if these events were really happening.
The look of the small town was wonderful and I was also impressed with the majority of the performances. I thought they were all quite natural and best of all is that they were at least believable for the type of film that you were watching. There are two versions of this movie available, the original 98-minute cut and a Director's Cut that clocks in at 108-minutes. I watched the Director's Cut and honestly felt that the film went on too long so perhaps the shorter version should have been the better one to watch.
As I said, there are certainly some flaws found in THE CARRIER but there's no question that it's an entertaining movie and one that doesn't allow its small budget to ruin it. Instead, the film took the lack of money and did something creative with it.
