Starring: Martin Freeman, Anthony Hayes, Susie Porter, Caren Pistorius, Kris McQuade, Bruce R Carter, Natasha Wanganeen, Simone Landers, David Gulpilil
Distributor: Netflix
Runtime: 104 mins. Reviewed in May 2018
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‘Cargo’ relies heavily on Martin Freeman. As Andy, Freeman spends swathes of the film acting across from just a baby, as secondary characters flit in and out. The film follows Andy’s personal Odyssey of sorts, an imposing quest with a concrete objective, but one with a twist – he knows that he’s not going to make it. If a zombie survival thriller without the possibility of survival sounds like your cup of tea, then you’re in luck. This sensitive and polished debut feature from filmmakers Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling aims for both emotional depth and mounting dread, and does an admirable job on both fronts.
Andy and his wife, Kay (Susie Porter), are making their way across the Australian Outback to a military outpost. The country has been beset by a terrible virus, which zombifies its victims after about 48 hours (thanks to Larry Van Duynhoven’s ghastly and highly tactile prosthetics). With them is their infant daughter, Rosie, whose existence gives the pair both hope and crushing responsibility. When an accident leads to Kay’s death and Andy’s infection, an inexorable countdown begins, as Andy must battle through his worsening illness to see Rosie safely delivered to a new home.
Plenty of filmmakers have attempted to give the zombie genre a good kick over the years. There have been horror comedies like ‘Shaun of the Dead’, experimental indies like ‘Pontypool’, and gonzo action flicks like ‘Wyrmwood’ (all of which are recommended for aficionados of the undead). ‘Cargo’ brings its own twist to the category, focusing on an intimate family story played out against its apocalyptic backdrop. There are no show-stopping set pieces or sequences of heart-stopping horror, but the innate emotional power of the story’s familial bonds and the acute vulnerability of a baby in this zombie-ridden world don’t need elaborate trappings to work.
Andy’s odyssey takes him through encounters tinged with kindness, such as his chance meeting with former school teacher Etta (Kris McQuade), and darkness, including an uneasy night spent with gas pipeline worker Vic (Anthony Hayes). While they contribute to the depth of Andy’s ordeal, they can’t help but feel like they’re distracting from the potent story at its core. Given the strength of the film’s premise, there needn’t be interludes in which Rosie’s safety and her bond with her father become almost an afterthought.
That said, there is one powerful relationship that Andy forms that is integral to the narrative. Throughout his journey, Andy crosses paths with Thoomi (Simone Landers, solid in her debut), a young Indigenous girl who is trying to save her infected father with the help of a tribal Cleverman (David Gulpilil, as upright as ever). As Andy realises that Thoomi may hold the key to his daughter’s salvation, they form an emotional bond fuelled by necessity and compassion. Ramke, who adapted the screenplay from her and Howling’s 2013 Tropfest film of the same name, cleverly expands their original short by doubling down on the family stakes, while also organically introducing significant Indigenous Australian elements. As Indigenous groups return to their ancestral lands to live in “the old ways”, cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson captures gorgeous visuals through the smoke and flames of cleansing rituals. The Australian landscape also makes for an imposing setting, its natural beauty at odds with the challenges that its vastness represents to Andy. Further strong work roots the story in its Australian setting, such as the score’s clever integration of native instrumentation, particularly in its wooden percussion.
As mentioned, the success of ‘Cargo’ rests squarely on the shoulders of its leading man. Thanks to his roles in the immensely popular ‘Sherlock’ and ‘The Hobbit’ franchises, Freeman has become a household name over the last decade. If his success can be attributed to one thing, it would be the intensely relatable humanity with which he imbues his characters. Freeman can convey more with silent expressions and carefully deployed changes in breathing than others can manage in an entire monologue. He is utterly human, perfectly calibrated to invoke viewers’ empathy. This style works wonders for Andy’s highly sympathetic predicament, and he is never short of watchable.
Thanks to a strong lead performance and an ambitious scope, ‘Cargo’ is a satisfying, homegrown spin on a well-worn genre path. While Freeman’s talent has been well-documented for some time, it also announces Ramke and Howling as filmmakers to watch.
Callum Ryan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
This Australian thriller tells the story of a man trying to protect his infant daughter after zombies create a pandemic. The film is set in rural Australia, where humans everywhere are succumbing to an untreatable and incurable disease caused by zombies biting them. Zombies typically emerge from hibernating in the dark to kill, or infect, what humans they can find, and when infected by them, a human only has two days before being transformed into a zombie.
Andy (Martin Freeman) and his wife, Kay (Susie Porter), hide out in a houseboat on the River Murray in South Australia with their one year old daughter, Rosie, hoping to escape the pandemic. They are trying to get to a military base they hope will protect them. Foraging for food on an upturned boat along the way, Kay is infected and she in turn infects Andy, but not Rosie. When Kay dies, Andy knows he has only 48 hours of human existence left to protect his child. He wants to save her at any cost, but knows he is doomed.
Andy spends his time desperately looking for a guardian to care for his child. Trekking over land, he comes across white people trying to survive, often cruelly by what they do to others, even sacrificing other people as bait to lure zombies to their death. Some Aboriginal communities have managed to avoid contamination, and one of its members is a young Aboriginal girl, Thoomi (Simone Landers), who provides the answer for him. Thoomi has left her community because she wanted to look after her father who is infected, and Andy and Thoomi manage to find each other. They both wanted to protect someone they love, and they join forces to help each other. The final scenes of the movie show Thoomi returning to her community with Andy before he dies, promising him that she will care for his child.
The existence of a deadly disease that ravages humans is the focus of many horror, and science fiction films, but this movie has an unusual emphasis. Like many of them, the movie explores the threat of evolving viruses, and the impossibility of finding resistance to them, but its main concern is with parental love, and it sensitively advocates the preservation of the ancient culture of Australia’s Indigenous Peoples. Threading through the movie are horrible events, but it shows Indigenous persons retreating into the bush to form safe communities that will protect them. In one of those communities, David Gulpilil is the “clever man” of Thoomi’s tribe, and he gives Thoomi spiritual nourishment that helps sustain her.
This movie fulfils the requirements of its genre with expected horror scenarios, such as zombie flesh-eating, which is a byproduct of the viral infection, and it holds its tension well by people’s desperate attempts to stay alive. But it departs from its genre by providing thoughtful commentary on human and social issues, including race relations. Such themes lift the movie well above the ordinary for a film of this kind, and the movie has many positive messages to impart.
This is a horror movie with a difference, set in the Australian outback. Wonderful scenery is captured by camerawork that offers spectacular images of the Flinders ranges. Under the astute and sensitive direction of Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, the film freshly addresses its genre. A plot about “the undead”, as it were, is used to strongly communicate family and Indigenous values. When Andy and Thoomi escape into the outback with Rosie, the film focuses on a cross-racial group trying to survive, and it explores many issues that contrast white persons with Indigenous persons in Australian society. The film, against all expectation, mixes struggle for survival, with parental love and commitment, inter-generational unrest, and zombie violence.
This is a quality film for those who aren’t normally motivated to go to horror films. It has a fair share of gore (but not a great deal), but its heart beats strongest for family love, and racial harmony.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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