I had the great fortune of seeing the original short film "Cargo" upon which this film is based on. It is 7 minutes long, and it is exactly as long as it needs to be, telling a short, shocking, compelling story of a man in a zombie apocalypse with an infant child and a zombie bite. He roams around as much as he can, while setting up a contraption with a wooden pole holding some meat in front of his face, which serves to keep his zombie self perpetually moving forward to try to get the meat. In the end, he's shot dead by some other survivors, who then discover the baby and take it to safety.
It was amazing and it made me criy. When I saw that it had been re-made into a full length movie, I thought this is a joke gone too far. But since it was available to me for free, I decided to try it.
I regret it.
One of the best things about the original "Cargo" is that it was incredibly taut and minimalistic. There was very little dialogue, and nothing to distract from the main story of a doomed man trying to save his baby. Due to the need to fill in 105 minutes, this film version necessarily has to pad the hell out of that concept, turning a taut, tension-filled experience into a long, meandering adventure through subplots which end up in some way completely overshadowing the main plot.
"Cargo" 2013 was what it was, and gave us everything we needed. This one gives us far too much, indulging us with a pointless antagonistic plot involving a racist Australian redneck guy who keeps aboriginal people in cages as bait for zombies so he can kill them and loot their bodies, under the impression that once the zombie apocalypse is over, he will have lots of jewelry and consumer electronics and other things looted from the corpses to make himself rich. He also has a "wife" who is actually a woman he's basically kidnapped and keeping hostage because why not go full evil if you're going to add pointless filler.
This subplot keeps droning on and on, taking up so much of the film that it's hard to believe that it's all unfolding over less than 48 hours (as it's been established the zombie virus thing takes 48 hours to fully set in, and the infected have little wristband stopwatches that count down for them). Everything just keeps going on and on and the few characters there are do very little to generate any interest.
Another thing about the original "Cargo" is that, due to its short length and strict focus, with almost no dialogue, it basically lets us project ourselves onto the role of the Father. We empathize with him because of his very basic and human plight, and he does everything he can with what little he has and it's brilliant.
Here, we get to see again and again the personality of the Father character, and we get to see just how much of a complete idiot he is. From the very beginning, he's dorkily waving to a group of survivors across the river from him as though it were a sunday morning picnic and not the effing zombie apocalypse. Later when his wife is bitten, he needlessly prolongs her suffering long after she's accepted her fate, trying to reach a hospital that is out of the way of their escape route to do basically nothing other than waste time.
All throughout the film he keeps bumbling about, saying and doing stupid things, getting other people killed, and needlessly wasting time.
By the time we get to the famous moment from the short film where the Father makes a "raw meat on a stick" contraption to lure his zombie self into perpetually moving forward, he's already got another human companion with him he can hand his baby off to, AND he's barely 100 feet away from another group of survivors. There's entirely no reason for his bait contraption, all it serves is to waste time.
Ultimately, that's what the vast majority of this film does; waste time. And it does so to such a degree that any and all of the visceral, emotional intensity of the original film, is entirely evaporated to the point that the short film's iconic image of a zombified man with a baby strapped to his back and a wooden pole with meat on the end, is not a moment of necessity and human ingenuity in a moment of self sacrifice, but a pointless sight gag that serves only to remind you of the far superior short film.
It was amazing and it made me criy. When I saw that it had been re-made into a full length movie, I thought this is a joke gone too far. But since it was available to me for free, I decided to try it.
I regret it.
One of the best things about the original "Cargo" is that it was incredibly taut and minimalistic. There was very little dialogue, and nothing to distract from the main story of a doomed man trying to save his baby. Due to the need to fill in 105 minutes, this film version necessarily has to pad the hell out of that concept, turning a taut, tension-filled experience into a long, meandering adventure through subplots which end up in some way completely overshadowing the main plot.
"Cargo" 2013 was what it was, and gave us everything we needed. This one gives us far too much, indulging us with a pointless antagonistic plot involving a racist Australian redneck guy who keeps aboriginal people in cages as bait for zombies so he can kill them and loot their bodies, under the impression that once the zombie apocalypse is over, he will have lots of jewelry and consumer electronics and other things looted from the corpses to make himself rich. He also has a "wife" who is actually a woman he's basically kidnapped and keeping hostage because why not go full evil if you're going to add pointless filler.
This subplot keeps droning on and on, taking up so much of the film that it's hard to believe that it's all unfolding over less than 48 hours (as it's been established the zombie virus thing takes 48 hours to fully set in, and the infected have little wristband stopwatches that count down for them). Everything just keeps going on and on and the few characters there are do very little to generate any interest.
Another thing about the original "Cargo" is that, due to its short length and strict focus, with almost no dialogue, it basically lets us project ourselves onto the role of the Father. We empathize with him because of his very basic and human plight, and he does everything he can with what little he has and it's brilliant.
Here, we get to see again and again the personality of the Father character, and we get to see just how much of a complete idiot he is. From the very beginning, he's dorkily waving to a group of survivors across the river from him as though it were a sunday morning picnic and not the effing zombie apocalypse. Later when his wife is bitten, he needlessly prolongs her suffering long after she's accepted her fate, trying to reach a hospital that is out of the way of their escape route to do basically nothing other than waste time.
All throughout the film he keeps bumbling about, saying and doing stupid things, getting other people killed, and needlessly wasting time.
By the time we get to the famous moment from the short film where the Father makes a "raw meat on a stick" contraption to lure his zombie self into perpetually moving forward, he's already got another human companion with him he can hand his baby off to, AND he's barely 100 feet away from another group of survivors. There's entirely no reason for his bait contraption, all it serves is to waste time.
Ultimately, that's what the vast majority of this film does; waste time. And it does so to such a degree that any and all of the visceral, emotional intensity of the original film, is entirely evaporated to the point that the short film's iconic image of a zombified man with a baby strapped to his back and a wooden pole with meat on the end, is not a moment of necessity and human ingenuity in a moment of self sacrifice, but a pointless sight gag that serves only to remind you of the far superior short film.