A "review" of The Carrier (1988)

Your touch is sweet and kind
But there's something on your mind
I can't see your eyes, I can't see your eyes....

My Blu-ray copy of The Carrier came in the mail today. I tell you this because now that I have my copy, you should get yours.

I like good movies, but I loooove bad ones. I thought The Carrier would be one of the latter and discovered it to be closer to the former. I dismissed it on its face as a conventional horror movie: low budget, no-name cast, shot over two weekends with a small town of extras who had a camera, a microphone on a stick, and a lot of "can do" enthusiasm.

Boy, was I wrong. So, so wrong. If you choose to watch The Carrier, you should not make the same mistake I did. It is not your run of the mill late-80s horror film, not by any stretch of the imagination.

The movie starts with a square dance scene and an off-brand Rebel Without a Cause/The Outsiders-lookin' young man crashing the party. A group of locals is casually talking about "the black thing" that has begun appearing on the edge of town and debating whether to fear it or doubt its existence. "Oh," I thought. "This is going to be a by-the-numbers horror movie with a not-so-subtle social message about bigotry in it." I lost interest. I let the movie play and went off into the other room to prepare dinner, occasionally poking my head in to see if the creature feature special effects would be goofy enough to make me chuckle.

Do not do this. Sit down. Watch the film. There's a lot going on in this movie that is easy to miss, even if you think you're paying close attention.

I first saw The Carrier last month, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I half-heartedly watched it out of the side of my eye at first and then became so engaged and so haunted by its imagery that I sat down and watched it again the next day. Then I kicked myself for missing so much of it the first time around.

Then I went out and bought it on Blu-ray.

I don't even own a Blu-ray player.

Upon first glance, I considered The Carrier to be a fun, low-budget horror flick, something MST3K-worthy in the same vein as The Bloodwaters of Dr. Z or Boggy Creek (I or II, take your pick), or even The Giant Spider Invasion. Especially The Giant Spider Invasion. All of these films are so-bad-they're-good in the "get drunk with some friends and make fun of the hillbillies" way.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

The Carrier is not a perfect film and it certainly contains flaws that plague every low-budget movie. If you give it a chance, you will bear witness to an intelligent story of alienation and fear. Part The Outsiders, part The Crucible, part The Purge, this film is the story of a young man estranged from his community who becomes, very literally, toxic to everyone around him. I dare not say more. Perhaps I've already said too much. Don't spoil this movie for yourself. Just push play and observe.

The film is a delight to watch. It was shot on that grainy sorta-expired film stock from the mid 1980s that makes it look like it could have been filmed in the 1970s. The acting is poor but heartfelt and earnest. The special effects are exemplary for the budget of the movie, and just when you start thinking this is going to be a fun, cheesy "guy in a rubber suit" movie, it veers you down a sharp left turn of paranoia and old-fashioned, home-grown, utterly volatile clan warfare. What?

The Hatfields and the McCoys were a spat over a Scrabble game compared to The Carrier. This movie gets bonkers. Full-on mob mentality, red scare, wrap-yourself-in-plastic-to-stay-pure, murder-your-neighbor-for-his-stuff, end-of-days mania. And it is engrossing and frightening and bizarre and wonderful. Every so often you find a gem like The Carrier, where a humble band of folks just try to make a little cinematic enterprise for funsies and end up with a secret masterpiece of dread and creeping, amorphous, "fear of the unknown" terror. The film underscores the horrifying notion that anything can kill you at any time and you can't know what or how, but you have to do something — anything — to protect yourself and your loved ones at any cost.

And in that mad rush to find your own tentative safety, what are you willing to sacrifice to reach it?

10 out of 10. Make sure your cats are safely upstairs, wrap yourself in a big plastic sheet, and watch The Carrier. This movie knocked my socks off and that was when I was only half paying attention to it. The full experience is shocking, bizarre, and will stay with you for days.

The Blu-ray contains two cuts of the movie, a director's cut and a theatrical cut. The theatrical cut contains a 2-second error at the half-way point that forces the video and audio to be unwatchably out of sync and I still bought it anyway because it's just that good. If you want to see a small town of hillbillies lose their god-damned minds over barn cats, it's on YouTube in its entirety.