Is man inherently evil as the Biblical concept suggests, or does society corrupt us, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau insists? Is evil really a state of being, or just part of a dichotomy introduced by religious thought? It is difficult to adhere to such categories as “good and evil” in a world as enlightened and often nihilistic as our own. In the diegetic world of Carriers, this categorization becomes even more problematic. Directors Álex and David Pastor gave this question some thought in their first feature-length film, constructing a desolate and dangerously silent world. In the spirit of recent films on viral pandemics such as 28 Weeks Later (2007) and I Am Legend (2007), Carriers conveys images of the world as an empty house, in which Man is no longer at home.
Survival in a virus-infested world is only made possible by the erection of strict sets of rules, which in turn must be supported by an explicit categorization. Only in times of absolute desolation is one forced to learn how to harden oneself in order to live as long as possible. Two fairly uneven brothers, Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci, The Informers) and Brian (Chris Pine, Star Trek) are on a roadtrip ad horrendum, trecking through a post-apocalyptic America with their friends Kate and Bobby, while learning how to survive. Acts of humanity become inane in the face of a virus with 100% communicability; anyone who is infected is as good as dead and must be segregated from the healthy.
In memory of idyllic vacations on Turtle Beach, the group is planning on travelling to what they consider to be the last bit of halcyon world (if there ever was one) to find peace in a world reigned over by death. However, their journey is more Homer’s Odyssey than a Jack Kerouac novel.
Snapshots of empty streets, deserted towns, and a few corpses on the side of the road are the only a glimpses of this world’s condition that we receive. A lynched body, decorated with a racist slur, hangs from a telephone pole, admonishing a torn society while simulatenously serving as a cynical reversal of religious symbolism: as Jesus was mocked by the centurions with a crown of thorns and the words “King of the Jews” above his head as he died for mankind’s sins, this man is labelled at fault for humanity’s demise, guilty by provenience. Meanwhile, a coughing priest preaches on the radio about the end of times, speaking of God’s punishment for the sinful human race.
It is not solely the virus that brings mortal danger, but also the behavior presupposed by a pandemic. Survival at all costs is the new mantra – kindness and self-abandonment are a sure-fire way to get yourself killed. As soon as protective mechanisms are neglected and bouts of humaneness ensue, for example when it comes to selflessly helping an infected child, imprudence is punished by infection and death. There is no longer an age distinction between innocent and guilty, a child is just as much of a carrier as anyone else.
There is a thin line between the will to survive and utter selfishness. Homo homini lupus: Man turns into a beast when thrown back on his own resources. When all social ties are broken and authorities no longer regulate social coexistence, mankind regresses quickly. William Golding warned of this in “Lord of the Flies,”and Friedrich Nietzsche mentions mankind’s inner beast on several occasions.
In fact, Nietzsche refers to man as an animal, contending that the development of man’s deep and evil spirit has placed him above all other animals; in the course of time, man has be domesticated, made tame and predictable.
The Nietzschean dichotomy of good and evil –or, respectively, good and bad - is part of his account on the development of the master-slave morality, a system he believes to be rooted in Homerian Greece. Throughout this system “good” is associated with the life force, with strength, power, and health, whereas “bad” is connected to poverty, weakness, and sickness. This type of categorization is in accordance with the protagonists’ self-taught survival ethic.
We can no longer make out any type of binary logic; good and evil (or let’s call it “harmful” just to remove the solely religious base) are no longer strictly separated and can in fact hardly be discerned from one another. There’s no specific feature that makes something harmful stand out- a harmful person cannot be distinguished by his looks, the dichotomy of good vs. evil equals fair vs. ugly has been cast overboard long ago.
Two women driving a car decorated with ample Christian symbolism are revealed as selfish and brutal. There is something bad, something pernicious within all inhabitants of this viral world, it does not take much for them to cross the line between just and unjust. It is debatable whether the ends really justify the means, and whether desperate times call for desperate measures, since such bywords are empty phrases. And really this points at the world outside of the movie as well. The proverbial desperate times are called upon ever so often to justify baneful acts
So how far can one go to ensure survival? Carriers shows us mankind’s dark side when it portrays how healthy individuals refuse to help each other, and even fight to the death over a tank of gas. People are the real danger in this story, more dangerous to each other in their struggle to live than the virus itself. And instead of choosing a somber setting, instead of applying pathetic fallacy to let the viewer experience the peril, Carriers stages these scenes amidst fields of flowers, under endless, clear-blue skies, with birds singing in the background. The world’s physical appearance has not changed; it has only lost a few of its inhabitants. The world is still as it was, and it does not require mankind to continue. Nature has not only outlived Man, it has defeated him.
The formation of a post-apocalyptic society, as is so hopeful portrayed in many movies of this genre, is virtually impossible in this world. Instead of organizing into larger and more functional groups, the few survivors wander about in search of some peace and quiet, of a place where they can escape their situation. Deep down, everyone is aware that there is no escape from the omnipresent death and disease, and even if there are no corpses in an idyllic field, the memories of the events linger. No one wants to help his fellow man, especially not if the fellow man is a stranger. A group of men clad in protective suits thinks they have invented the perfect system by hermetically sealing off a hotel building with duct tape and plastic foil; yet this perfection can be ruined simply by a broken window. The adhesive power of a strip of duct tape suddenly decides between life and death.
As Brian so aptly puts it, “everyone dies.” For most of the characters, this comes true sooner rather than later. Because of this, everyone is forced to learn to depersonalize the infected. Once you’re infected, you are already dead, and this mantra applies to lovers, siblings, children - to everyone. According to psychologist Philip Zimbardo, it is this type of dehumanization which enables the transformation from good into evil. Once a group of people is characterized as inferior, maybe even less than human, they can easily be mistreated.
The group sabotages its own survival pact as it comes to realize that strict rules are easier to live by when they are only present in theory. Applying them to reality changes the perspective. Fear blinds people in the end, and the fear of being alone, of being ostracized due to infection, is too powerful to handle. When one of the film’s characters becomes infected and turns into one these inferiors him/herself, the cruelty he or she has to face is overwhelming.
In the end, it is not sibling rivalry that destroys their coherence, it is the lie: concealing infection endangers the whole group, and forces the implementation of their own deadly rules upon them. When the remaining members of the group arrive in Turtle Beach, they find it to be as it has always been; yet nothing is the same. Spiritually, they are already dead. A location is often defined by its inhabitants, and memories are painful proof of this. Memories of careless times show the brothers enjoying beach life and prove to us that no man is an island. The tragedy in all this is while people are dependant on human surroundings for their identity and stability; they are incapable of erecting a stable network of survivors to ensure continuity, and to stabilize their future. There is no use restoring for posterity, as there will be no progeny.
Carriers manages to install a feeling of discomfort in the viewer without exerting the Freytag triangle to its maximum. The plot develops more slowly than normal for this genre, and the sense of helplessness and abandonment dominates any kind of perturbation or even horror that might arise. Brian’s nihilistic and cynical way of dealing with the situation enforces this atmosphere just as much as his brother Danny’s quiet suffering. Fans of action-laden cinema are likely to criticize the film’s slow pace, and the fact that events unravel slowly, if at all. This slow and quiet progression, however, might also be seen as a signifier of a dying world’s abundant hopelessness. A horror film does not need to hurl frightening effects at the viewers, as these subtle means serve the purpose just fine. Instead of focusing on excessive violence and gore, Carriers prefers the silent atmosphere of nihilistic postmodernism. There is no hope for this world, and there is no help coming. The few remaining and healthy survivors are left to fend for themselves, and since selfishness is the master of this post-apocalyptic world, they probably won’t make it. The impression of a god-forsaken, heartless world whose massive progress in all fields could not save it from eradication at the hands of a thing as simple as a virus is confirmed by the coughing priest on the radio.
These protagonists are anything but heroes, as they do not arise from a catastrophe like a phoenix from the ashes but are forced to adapt to their new situation. Young people, torn from their everyday lives, are now armed with Clorox, rubber gloves, and protective masks, trying to sanitize their way to survival. While Carriers does make use of a fair amount of stereotyping (women are shown as dishonest and incapable of action, while men are drastically tart), it manages to build a convincingly nightmarish atmosphere. The film never supplies an answer as to whether Man is inherently good or evil. It merely shows choices and consequences, and a world that is empty as it can be.
Survival in a virus-infested world is only made possible by the erection of strict sets of rules, which in turn must be supported by an explicit categorization. Only in times of absolute desolation is one forced to learn how to harden oneself in order to live as long as possible. Two fairly uneven brothers, Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci, The Informers) and Brian (Chris Pine, Star Trek) are on a roadtrip ad horrendum, trecking through a post-apocalyptic America with their friends Kate and Bobby, while learning how to survive. Acts of humanity become inane in the face of a virus with 100% communicability; anyone who is infected is as good as dead and must be segregated from the healthy.
In memory of idyllic vacations on Turtle Beach, the group is planning on travelling to what they consider to be the last bit of halcyon world (if there ever was one) to find peace in a world reigned over by death. However, their journey is more Homer’s Odyssey than a Jack Kerouac novel.
Snapshots of empty streets, deserted towns, and a few corpses on the side of the road are the only a glimpses of this world’s condition that we receive. A lynched body, decorated with a racist slur, hangs from a telephone pole, admonishing a torn society while simulatenously serving as a cynical reversal of religious symbolism: as Jesus was mocked by the centurions with a crown of thorns and the words “King of the Jews” above his head as he died for mankind’s sins, this man is labelled at fault for humanity’s demise, guilty by provenience. Meanwhile, a coughing priest preaches on the radio about the end of times, speaking of God’s punishment for the sinful human race.
It is not solely the virus that brings mortal danger, but also the behavior presupposed by a pandemic. Survival at all costs is the new mantra – kindness and self-abandonment are a sure-fire way to get yourself killed. As soon as protective mechanisms are neglected and bouts of humaneness ensue, for example when it comes to selflessly helping an infected child, imprudence is punished by infection and death. There is no longer an age distinction between innocent and guilty, a child is just as much of a carrier as anyone else.
There is a thin line between the will to survive and utter selfishness. Homo homini lupus: Man turns into a beast when thrown back on his own resources. When all social ties are broken and authorities no longer regulate social coexistence, mankind regresses quickly. William Golding warned of this in “Lord of the Flies,”and Friedrich Nietzsche mentions mankind’s inner beast on several occasions.
In fact, Nietzsche refers to man as an animal, contending that the development of man’s deep and evil spirit has placed him above all other animals; in the course of time, man has be domesticated, made tame and predictable.
The Nietzschean dichotomy of good and evil –or, respectively, good and bad - is part of his account on the development of the master-slave morality, a system he believes to be rooted in Homerian Greece. Throughout this system “good” is associated with the life force, with strength, power, and health, whereas “bad” is connected to poverty, weakness, and sickness. This type of categorization is in accordance with the protagonists’ self-taught survival ethic.
We can no longer make out any type of binary logic; good and evil (or let’s call it “harmful” just to remove the solely religious base) are no longer strictly separated and can in fact hardly be discerned from one another. There’s no specific feature that makes something harmful stand out- a harmful person cannot be distinguished by his looks, the dichotomy of good vs. evil equals fair vs. ugly has been cast overboard long ago.
Two women driving a car decorated with ample Christian symbolism are revealed as selfish and brutal. There is something bad, something pernicious within all inhabitants of this viral world, it does not take much for them to cross the line between just and unjust. It is debatable whether the ends really justify the means, and whether desperate times call for desperate measures, since such bywords are empty phrases. And really this points at the world outside of the movie as well. The proverbial desperate times are called upon ever so often to justify baneful acts
So how far can one go to ensure survival? Carriers shows us mankind’s dark side when it portrays how healthy individuals refuse to help each other, and even fight to the death over a tank of gas. People are the real danger in this story, more dangerous to each other in their struggle to live than the virus itself. And instead of choosing a somber setting, instead of applying pathetic fallacy to let the viewer experience the peril, Carriers stages these scenes amidst fields of flowers, under endless, clear-blue skies, with birds singing in the background. The world’s physical appearance has not changed; it has only lost a few of its inhabitants. The world is still as it was, and it does not require mankind to continue. Nature has not only outlived Man, it has defeated him.
The formation of a post-apocalyptic society, as is so hopeful portrayed in many movies of this genre, is virtually impossible in this world. Instead of organizing into larger and more functional groups, the few survivors wander about in search of some peace and quiet, of a place where they can escape their situation. Deep down, everyone is aware that there is no escape from the omnipresent death and disease, and even if there are no corpses in an idyllic field, the memories of the events linger. No one wants to help his fellow man, especially not if the fellow man is a stranger. A group of men clad in protective suits thinks they have invented the perfect system by hermetically sealing off a hotel building with duct tape and plastic foil; yet this perfection can be ruined simply by a broken window. The adhesive power of a strip of duct tape suddenly decides between life and death.
As Brian so aptly puts it, “everyone dies.” For most of the characters, this comes true sooner rather than later. Because of this, everyone is forced to learn to depersonalize the infected. Once you’re infected, you are already dead, and this mantra applies to lovers, siblings, children - to everyone. According to psychologist Philip Zimbardo, it is this type of dehumanization which enables the transformation from good into evil. Once a group of people is characterized as inferior, maybe even less than human, they can easily be mistreated.
The group sabotages its own survival pact as it comes to realize that strict rules are easier to live by when they are only present in theory. Applying them to reality changes the perspective. Fear blinds people in the end, and the fear of being alone, of being ostracized due to infection, is too powerful to handle. When one of the film’s characters becomes infected and turns into one these inferiors him/herself, the cruelty he or she has to face is overwhelming.
In the end, it is not sibling rivalry that destroys their coherence, it is the lie: concealing infection endangers the whole group, and forces the implementation of their own deadly rules upon them. When the remaining members of the group arrive in Turtle Beach, they find it to be as it has always been; yet nothing is the same. Spiritually, they are already dead. A location is often defined by its inhabitants, and memories are painful proof of this. Memories of careless times show the brothers enjoying beach life and prove to us that no man is an island. The tragedy in all this is while people are dependant on human surroundings for their identity and stability; they are incapable of erecting a stable network of survivors to ensure continuity, and to stabilize their future. There is no use restoring for posterity, as there will be no progeny.
Carriers manages to install a feeling of discomfort in the viewer without exerting the Freytag triangle to its maximum. The plot develops more slowly than normal for this genre, and the sense of helplessness and abandonment dominates any kind of perturbation or even horror that might arise. Brian’s nihilistic and cynical way of dealing with the situation enforces this atmosphere just as much as his brother Danny’s quiet suffering. Fans of action-laden cinema are likely to criticize the film’s slow pace, and the fact that events unravel slowly, if at all. This slow and quiet progression, however, might also be seen as a signifier of a dying world’s abundant hopelessness. A horror film does not need to hurl frightening effects at the viewers, as these subtle means serve the purpose just fine. Instead of focusing on excessive violence and gore, Carriers prefers the silent atmosphere of nihilistic postmodernism. There is no hope for this world, and there is no help coming. The few remaining and healthy survivors are left to fend for themselves, and since selfishness is the master of this post-apocalyptic world, they probably won’t make it. The impression of a god-forsaken, heartless world whose massive progress in all fields could not save it from eradication at the hands of a thing as simple as a virus is confirmed by the coughing priest on the radio.
These protagonists are anything but heroes, as they do not arise from a catastrophe like a phoenix from the ashes but are forced to adapt to their new situation. Young people, torn from their everyday lives, are now armed with Clorox, rubber gloves, and protective masks, trying to sanitize their way to survival. While Carriers does make use of a fair amount of stereotyping (women are shown as dishonest and incapable of action, while men are drastically tart), it manages to build a convincingly nightmarish atmosphere. The film never supplies an answer as to whether Man is inherently good or evil. It merely shows choices and consequences, and a world that is empty as it can be.
Works Cited: Nietzsche, Friedrich. Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887). Eine Streitschrift. Stuttgart 1988. Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House: New York 2007. Carriers. Dir. Àlex and David Pastor. 2009.
This article originally appeared in Jura Gentium Cinema.
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