Post-Apocalyptic Movie Review

I was in the mood the other day for a scary movie that I could watch with my teenagers and wife. I watched the trailer for Carriers and thought “That’ll do the trick”. There were some good jumps and scares here and there but all and all the movie was more depressing than scary. The trailer gives you the impression it’s a zombie movie. It is not. This movie is also cursed with what I call the 90210-factor. From the cover of the DVD you can see the main characters all wearing masks that they’ve drawn faces on. Why would they draw faces on them you may ask yourself. It’s simple. They’re teenagers and they’re hip and they’re cool and that’s what teenagers do. However, there is no room for teenage angst in the post-apocalyptic world. Megalomaniacal ex-copier repair men? Yes. Teenagers with a chip on their shoulder? No. Poor acting by most of the cast, a ponderous script and predictable ending and yes, those goofy faces they drew on their face mask forces me to give this movie 2 Stars. One noticeable exception to the all of the above is the solid performance by Law and Order: SVU’s Christopher Meloni. I hope we see him in more movies. I only hope they’re better than this one.

The next leg of my journey through the post-apocalyptic ruins is The Book Of Eli starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. This is from the same ilk of movies as The Road Warrior. You remember The Road Warrior don’t you? Post-apocalyptic thugs going around in cars and motorcycles in a desperate search for gas. What about Waterworld? Post-apocalyptic thugs going around on jet skis in a desperate search for land. I suppose you can be forgiven for not remembering The Postman which was post-apocalyptic thugs going around on horseback in a desperate search for mail or something like that, I never quite figured it out. Well now we have post-apocalyptic thugs going around in cars, on motorcycles (hell I even think there was a row boat in there somewhere) in a desperate search for a book. A smarter person would say something about how this movie explores the duality of the purpose of religion to be used for good or evil based on the designs of those in charge of said religion. My real opinion is this movie really didn’t bring anything new to the genre. I don’t know about you but I’m also very tired of seeing Gary Oldman playing a bad guy. There was some stylistic action scenes but nothing special. All and all I give the movie 3 Stars.

To round out this review I thought The Road would be a logical choice. The problem was I hadn’t seen the movie and based on what I saw in the preview I didn’t want to see it either. I read the book that the movie is based on and I loved it. In the book it was heavily implied that a nuclear war caused the end of the world. The best I could tell from the preview they had decided to make a liberal propaganda film out of it and say it was global warming that caused the end of the world. I was fully prepared to review the film without having seen it and give it a big fat zero. However, here at Review-Spew.com ethics, integrity and honesty are more than mere words; they are the hallmark of all the work we do to bring you, our readers, the very best possible reviews. With that in mind, I downloaded an illegal copy of The Road and watched it. I was completely wrong about a lot of things. They stuck to the nuclear war back-story. In fact they stuck to the book very closely. This was an amazing movie. It was not an action movie nor was it even very entertaining, but I still really, really liked it. Look for a small role from Robert Duvall. It’s probably his best performance. If you decide to watch it, ask yourself whether it’s immoral to behave immorally if you do it to protect what could very well be the last innocent thing in the world. Or I suppose you could ask yourself whether it was really necessary to show Viggo Mortensen’s junk swinging around like some grotesque fleshy pendulum. I don’t know the answer to the first question but the answer to the second is a resounding “Hell No” Since they felt the need to do it anyway, the movie loses 1 star earning itself a total of 4 stars.