Cargo – Review
I will admit that I have a soft spot (in my brain) for zombie stories. I’m a big fan of Walking Dead and World War Z. But I also know that just having a zombie apocalypse as the setting is not enough for a good story. Cargo is a zombie movie like no other.
I watched it because it was a post-apocalyptic movie and because it starred Martin Freeman. But it didn’t take long for me to get completely drawn in. This is a zombie movie like no other.
If you are looking for tons of gore and violence, you probably will be disappointed. There is some shooting but not much. There are some intestines but the movie doesn’t seek to shock in that way.
The premise is that of a family that is in rural Australia during a pandemic in which people, once bitten, turn into what we would call zombies. So far, pretty typical (except for the Australian setting).
No details about the cause of the pandemic are given. The only information, and what is central to the story, is the progression of symptoms and the timeline of forty-eight hours after the bite before the person turns.
The family is travelling down a river looking for safety. The wife and mother is bitten, leading the family to leave their boat and seek help. She dies and the husband and father is also bitten. He has forty-eight hours to find someone to take in his infant daughter before he dies and turns.
This is the heart of Cargo. It’s not about how to kill as many zombies as possible. It is about the nature of family. Enforcing this theme are a number of other families that they encounter along the way.
Another important part of the movie is the role of some aboriginal people. We get a taste of the racism that survives the end of the world. We also see the contrast in two ways to deal with the zombie problem.
Cargo is a great zombie movie. But it would have been great even without the zombies. Even if it had been about a deadly disease that kills within forty-eight hours, the father still needs to protect his daughter.
Cargo is available on Netflix and I highly recommend you watch it.
