Cargo review: Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke bring the feature version of the viral short movie to the streaming giant Netflix.
Cargo Review by Orestes Adam.
Cargo review
It’s a genre that has become as lifeless and rotten as the flesh-eating corpses that define it, yet somehow filmmakers continuously find ways to imbue their own unique freshness into the zombie flick. Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke’s Cargo tackles this fatigue from two distinct angles; firstly through its gorgeously haunting portrayal of the Australian Outback and secondly through the emphasis it places on parenthood. This particular tonal reinvention however so drastically alienates the genre’s established audience, all the while simply proving too unoriginal for outsiders to invest in. Nevertheless, thanks to some striking imagery and effective cinematography, the film very well nearly proves worth your time.
Cargo is an adaptation of the directing duo’s viral 7-minute short of the same name, itself a problem when viewed in the context of the 105-minute feature. The world has been once again overrun by a zombie outbreak, leaving our heroes Andy and Kay (Martin Freeman and Susie Porter) desperate to reach a military base so that they can live to raise their infant daughter Rosie. The stakes increase dramatically once, after Kay’s demise, Andy himself is bitten and is left with a mere 48 hours to ensure his daughter’s survival. It’s a remarkably intense premise, using Rosie to strengthen the danger far beyond the safety of our protagonist, but what follows is all too predictable, and it won’t take long for viewers to accurately presume what’s to come.
Cargo review
Howling and Ramke, the latter of whom wrote the film, increasingly build from the powerful simplicity of its premise by going so far as to imbue their work with its fair share of allegorical sensibilities, touching upon fracking, government funding, and the horrific mistreatment of Australia’s native aboriginals even after society as we know it has collapsed. While these inclusions do show signs of a fully realised post-apocalyptic world, it appears that the film is intent on holding this societal mirror to its audience without actually commenting on any of the issues it expresses. Instead of exploring the cultural symbolism the film prefers to meander through the Outback in several scenes that follow a gruelingly repetitive formula. Nearly every scene after the introduction of Thoomi (Simone Landers), an aboriginal who Andy rescues from the severely underused antagonist Vic (Anthony Hayes), is summarised by some beautiful drone shots, exhausted walking, and unmemorable dialogue about Andy and Thoomi’s respective pasts with few set pieces in between. At some point it forces us to ask why we’re meant to be invested in characters who themselves so clearly have little reason or will to live apart from ensuring Rosie’s protection, something that is very much ingrained into this story’s drama, but isn’t compellingly executed.
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Martin Freeman proves he has no problems holding a film on his own, the gradual and reactionary nature of his acting providing a strong counterbalance to the gruff adrenaline-fuelled leading men that typically dominate the screens of Z movies. Outside of him however there is hardly a noteworthy performance within the ensemble and even in Freeman’s case his act is almost corrupted by a slew of pacing problems, namely the fact that there isn’t an ounce of tension in this script. While horror films lend themselves best to claustrophobic environments, Cargo is strictly agoraphobic, the idea being that something could come at you from any angle and direction from miles away. Yet even then it doesn’t take us long to forget entirely about the dangers these characters are constantly surrounded by. Much of the blame for this can likely be attributed to a strong lack of funding, as cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson continuously comes up with increasingly inventive ways to depict its action, but the film just doesn’t have the character drama or the atmospheric thrills strong enough to make up for its low budget.
While it has the potential to be a compelling watch, Cargo’s flaws become clearer in the context of its source material, from which the most striking images of the feature film are ripped directly from. Howling and Ramke essentially tell the same story in 105 minutes that they previously did in 7, filling the rest of its run time with great ideas that are only partially realised. Ultimately while the short film leaves an impact far more profound than its run time dictates, in feature-length form it is hard to justify the weight of Cargo as worth carrying.
Cargo review by Orestes Adam, May 2018.
Cargo is now playing on Netflix worldwide.
