We absolutely love zombie movies and shows. There is something about the visuals of undead shambling creatures swarming cities, overrunning towns, and bands of intrepid survivors taking them on with rifles and katanas.
From zombie stories, writers are able to extract a respectable amount of drama, and they often explore themes like grief and the nature of evil. While the undead themselves are not very talkative, their very presence potentially creates interesting story beats.
These stories also allow us to live out survivalist fantasies from the comfort and safety of our homes. There are also comedies, some great, some not so much, deriving humour from strange state of affairs created by the arrival of undead.
But it must be admitted the genre has become saturated, and most of what we get nowadays is uninspired, if not utter dross. Creatives seem to forget that it is not the zombies that are special, it is ultimately the characters, the breathing ones, that is.
So just when you thought there is not much remained to do in the zombie genre, a delightful surprise like Cargo comes along and once again one gets hopeful that there are indeed more compelling stories to tell that involve the undead.
I described Cargo as delightful, but it is also depressing and heartbreaking, but has an ending that is positive tinged with poignance. The movie has zombies, but it is more an emotional character piece and a cautionary tale.
The story is set after zombies have already taken over. The world has all but ended, most of the population wiped out and the rest turned into mindless cannibals. Death and despondency abound.
Martin Freeman and Susie Porter play the couple Andy and Rose, respectively, who have found shelter in a houseboat and are desperately searching for a sense of safety and permanence along a river in rural Australia with their infant daughter.
Once, Andy spots a happy family with a husband and his wife and their two young daughters, and hails them cheerfully. But the husband’s response is belligerent. He lifts his shirt to show him a revolver. It’s now just that kind of world. Things like kindness and trust are in short supply.
Andy and Rose have differences as to what their next course should be. While Andy wishes to continue to a place that is supposedly a refuge, Rose is afraid of running out of their meagre food supply and watching their daughter starve to death. The food issue is temporarily resolved when Andy finds a half-submerged boat. But the said boat also has a zombie which bites her on the knee, and now she has two days before she turns.
She asks him to kill her, but Andy is afraid to lose her and in the process gets bitten from her in the arm. Now, he has 48 hours to find someone who can take care of Rose. In the rest of the movie, the audiences are witness to the trials and tribulations of an father as he races against time to find a shelter for his infant daughter before he turns into a zombie and eats her as well.
A parallel plotline has a young aboriginal girl Thoomi (Simone Landers) hiding from her own tribe so that they won’t kill her father who has turned. She believes he can still be saved, that a certain Clever Man (late David Gulpilil) can put his soul back into his body. She feeds him small animals every now and then to keep him alive — if “alive” he still is. Thoomi and Andy’s paths cross, and they team-up, united in their griefs.
Cargo is not your typical escapist “fun” zombie thriller. In many ways, it is an audacious undertaking. It dares to be a slow burner, which in this genre is probably a cardinal sin (who wants to watch a movie that has a man mostly running from or running into the undead with occasional encounters with humans?) and indeed many zombie-freaks would be bored.
Yes, it has are zombies, but do not expect a lot of gory thrills of limbs being dismembered, innards uncoiling out of bellies or heads being chopped off, and so on. Andy is no hero. He has no great physical strength or expertise with arms. But then no amount of strength can repel a zombie horde. So whatever encounters he does have with zombies, Andy choose to either hide and run.
Cargo ensnares you with its atmosphere, visuals and character-work. (Photo: Netflix)
But by the time you are at the halfway point, you realise film has ensnared you with its atmosphere, visuals and brilliant character-work. Freeman, used to playing the everyman by now, gives a brilliantly refined performance that is wholly devoid of theatrics. He is the focal point of the story, and makes Andy feel like a real person, rather than a character in a story.
The story also touches upon climate change and the fracking, the phenomenon that has proved severely damaging to the earth and environment. The Clever Man talks about how man is poisoning the earth, and the apocalypses has turned humans into flesh-eating monsters is earth fighting back.
There are hints that the infection may have arisen out of a virus that was long buried in earth and came forth during fracking, in which crude oil and natural gas are extracted by injecting high pressure liquid into underground rock formations. There are also welcome nods to the Aboriginal Australians and how their way of life has made them extremely well-suited to survive and evade zombies.
Cargo is probably a different zombie movie than you are used to, but it is certainly worth your time.
Tip: This movie sprung out of a short film that released in 2013. It is simply a condensed form of the feature version, but is worth watching. For it is a good example of just how much plot and character you can squeeze into 7-odd minutes and still tell a coherent story.
Under the Radar is a weekly series that talks about one great movie or TV series that for some reason slipped most people’s attention — flew under the radar, so to speak — and is worth checking out.
