Overview
If you like Martin Freeman, especially when doing a movie in Australia, then this is for you. Zombie apocalypse. Ho hum, right? Nah, not this one. It has a very focused character story. With a couple interesting twists on the regular zombie tropes, this is a movie you won't want to blink while watching.
What would you do as a parent to keep your child alive in a zombie apocalypse?
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Trailer
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Transcript
Rhys: , like you just said, we're up to number eight for season six, and this is a different movie for us. This is the latest Lord of the Rings movie, which has a hobbit walking across the desolate Australian Outback delivering something that only they can deliver.
It's a common Lord of the Rings theme.
With a big twist that gets thrown into a lot, pit of lava at the end and everything's just hunky-dory
Yeah metaphorical lava at
least.
Yes
All right, so cargo, let's
Cargo. Yeah, Cargo. It is a film from 2017. It is an Australian… A- and here we go with the partnerships. It's an Australian-US-United Arab Emirates-UK film
I wonder how some of these come about. W- people live in one country, they're from another, they wanna film there so they get support, interesting
I think a lot of it's money. Who's hoping to pay for it?
Right.
It runs an hour and 45 minutes, which is a tad long. It feels slightly long to me because I find the film to be very sad. it makes it seem longer, but
They picked a good leading character, leading actor
oh, for
Johnny Depp-y
Not counting the baby or Tumi,
Right
It garnered 18 nominations and got one win out of all of that. And it was based on a seven-minute award-winning short from 2013 by the same name and the same people. And y- you can find it on YouTube if you look up Cargo movie short. That cost them $5,000 to do, the short did. Andy Rodoreda, who plays a character in the movie, was the main character in the short. But by all means, do not watch the short before you see this one, because the short is pretty much just the last, the big tenderloin seven minutes of this film
As a standalone piece,
got it. Okay. We've had a few of those. They do a short, it sh- it shows, they get money to make the longer one. And sometimes they're a- actually a lot better. Sometimes actually the short's better
Yeah. Unlike Baskin, like if you watch the Baskin short, it is really just a chunk of what Baskin was, like thematically. It's not gonna ruin the story for you. It's just gonna be like you can expect to see a lot more of this in the full-length film. If you watch the short one here, you're definitely gonna be
Got it. And I, will say right off the bat if we're doing our, here's some movies for newbies, here's movies for advanced people, whatever, this is a, a newbie movie compared to some of the others. It's easily digestible especially if you like zombies. It's
It is. In fact, it's like After Midnight where it is more of kind of a, a discussion about choosing how you die than… and a drama at that, as opposed… With horror elements laced throughout.
Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a character movie. And I even made the comment that the plot is not anything outstanding. There's nothing like, "Oh my God, what's gonna happen next?" Really throughout the movie. It's more a matter of feeling for the characters and following the character's journey. It's one of those type of movies.
And honestly, I'm surprised a little bit with a female director, I'm surprised they didn't twist it a bit and let the guy die early on and the woman continues the journey. 'Cause we don't see a lot of that. There's other guys, heck, that's what started The Walking Dead TV show ,
yeah. Yeah. And 28 year- 28 days later, a lot of them are following guys on these journeys. This was the first Australian feature length film to be released globally as a Netflix original.
Stephen: Oh, that's cool
Rhys: So you will be able to find this on Netflix anytime. It's not one of those things that's gonna come and go.
It is a, a Netflix property. Again, as a Netflix original in distribution, the box office was only about 56K. They're making all of it on streaming. We don't have that information.
Right
the release date was 2018, and they did it as a release in Australia in theaters in 2018, and then the next day released it on Netflix for the rest of the world.
So if you-
the next day would be the exact same day in real time.
Yeah. Depending on where you're at,
So if you were in Australia, you had the privilege of actually getting to see this in the theater if you wanted to.
Okay.
You didn't have to walk across the wastelands like they did to get to the theater.
Hopefully you did not. It was done for under 5 million, and they claim they were only able to land that kind of funding because they managed to get Martin Freeman to be in it, which I get.
Yeah he's definitely great for this part because well-known name he does well in just about anything. He does have his own little quirks that you can see in everything he does. But he's not like a, nothing against him, he's not a pretty boy. He's not an a, an actor that all the women are pu- putting up posters about.
He's a pretty standard guy, and he fits those parts really well
Yes, he is a 5'7" pinup for librarians.
That's true, yes.
They decided when they were coming up where they were gonna do this, they decided to shoot it in South Australia. And that adds all kinds of production issues due to how harsh the environment is. But the creators embraced it and made the entire environment itself part of the film.
It was filmed mostly around the Murraylands and Flinders Ranges, which is a pretty well-known section of South Australia for its natural beauty
Yeah. Yeah, there's others Australian movies, like Wolf Creek and stuff, and do the same thing. It's very desolate and open, and they show a lot of that
Yeah, I think W- Wolf Creek was shot more centrally located in it, much more deserty than this. This was much more kind of scrubland. This is essentially a zombie movie, but not unlike Night of the Living Dead or The Walking Dead, they don't call them zombies. In this film they are referred to as virals
A- and that's even very infrequently.
Yes.
Yeah,
we're more concerned about the, the living people and trying not to get turned into one than we are about zombies, 'cause don't s- we see some, but they're off in the distance more than anything
Yeah, and unlike The Walking Dead where everybody who's not in your group is an absolute loathsome, horrible excuse for a human being, you have a bad guy here, but everyone else just seems to be people. And they're… no one's beating anyone to death with a baseball bat because they don't like the way they talk to them or anything like that.
This is much more along the lines of, "Hey, we've only got so much food, so you just best keep walking," kind of deal
Yeah, and the, the characters are the standard typical characters in a lot of zombie movies. The person that's gonna help, the person that's gonna say, "Just keep going, I've got a gun." The one who's trying to cash in because, money is going to come back really quick and be useful.
Yeah. I would like to think that it, in the case of an actual societal collapse, we would be much more like the people in this movie, depicted in this, than we would in "The Walking Dead."
Yeah, I would hope so. But I guess there will be areas obvi- it's people are people and, they don't-- tigers don't change their stripes a whole lot. So I'm sure Walking Dead does have some truth to it. I'm just not sure if it's that big a thing with factions and, Mel Gibson on the apocalypse stuff.
Yeah. The movie was written and directed by Yolanda Ramke and her friend Ben Howling, and they worked together on the short as well. They got 25 million views on that short on YouTube,
Wow!
that drew the attention of American producers who were interested in making a longer formatted film.
So all you guys throwing stuff on YouTube, there you go
Plus that 25 million probably earned them a little cash too
Yeah, that's true. They pointed out that in the old days you would do a short just to get your name out into the industry, but nowadays in the advent of YouTube in 2012 and it taking off like that, you can do a short as a proof of concept and to get your view out to the public, not the industry, and catch the eye of foreign investors, which is exactly what they did here
Yeah. Or like I said, you make money off of the short on YouTube, and there's things you can do with that. There's, you discovered that whole s- channel on YouTube with shorts from producers and directors all over the world that has just about every style of movie too
Shout out to Omeleto if you guys are looking for s- for a rabbit hole to find. There's all kinds of different stuff there.
Yeah
Since it was being shot in South Australia, they really wanted to include this indigenous element, 'cause when they thought about it, they were like, "You know what? The indigenous peoples who are, like, still functioning as a culture would probably weather this kind of storm much better than the civilized folks living in cities and things."
Yep, I like that part of the, the story and message a lot
Yeah. But they also pointed out how tricky it is to do 'cause they're walking a tightrope there. Neither one of them are ind- are indigenous, so they brought in a whole contingency of people from the tribal areas to help them walk this line. They were saying they wanted to they wanted it to be informative but not preachy, because preachy gets boring and offensive
Yeah, and then more people wanna slam you for it. I'm glad they pulled-- They didn't just try and do it, and they got some people that they're actually trying to portray to help
Yeah. The people they're portraying are part of the Adnyamathanha culture in South Australia, and it's got the name literally translates to rock people. And there are subgroups within, like the Yanni and the Pitjantjatjara just to name a few. But, it's in Native American parlance, which we might know better, you're gonna have, like you had the Iroquois Nation, but it was made up of several smaller kind of tribes.
This is the same deal. They have claim to 16,000 square miles of land that they inhabit in Australia and they have for about 49,000 years, which is a long
take a year or two
yeah, a long time for anybody to
y- all you gotta do is go land the ship and they lose it, so there it goes. And shout out to Bone Tomahawk right about now, 'cause there was another interesting … it just made me think of them 'cause of the makeup they had on, the Wardians and things
Yeah. Ramke and Howling met while they were on staff for the Australian reality show Big Brother, and they became friends. They spent three years working together on the script and production for just the short. And maybe that's why it's such a good short, 'cause they spent so much time on it.
But they dedicated so much time to preparing it before they actually jumped in to shoot it, and so when they shot it, it just went super smooth. It just bang. Yolanda sees herself as the director for performance, and she sees Ben as the technical editing, shooting guy. So that's how they divvy up the director's roles between the two of them.
That's nice. That's cool
They describe their budget as modest for the level of talent they had and the script that they were trying to print. And Ben had said, "It's so funny 'cause you never know in film, you start the day shooting 'Gone With the Wind' in your head, and you end up shooting 'The Dukes of Hazzard' by the end of the day."
So I was like, that's a really interesting scale there from
It is.
With the Wind" to
Gets the point across
Yeah. They were both pretty young when they made this film, so when they look back to the most influential zombie films of their youth, "28 Days Later" is the film that they say got their generation into zombies, One of the producers, Kristina Ceyton, said of this film "The decision to suit- shoot in South Australia was based on various factors. First and foremost, we had such a fantastic experience on 'The Babadook' and great support from the South Australian Film Corporation, and we had outstanding facilities, including the Adelaide Studios, and the crew and industry partnerships formed in South Australia have endured."
So the producers of this were the same producers who did "The Babadook," a few years-- three years earlier,
Which is very popular
Yeah. Oh, it's a great movie. Martin Freeman played Andy in this film. He is a Hampshire-born actor. He's our age. Started acting in '97, mostly in television in Great Britain, in the BBC. In 2001, he landed role as Tim Canterbury in The Office, which for our American folks, Tim Canterbury is the Jim Halpert version in the original Office.
So he's the handsome w- he's the handsome guy who ends up-- likable guy who ends up with the romantic interest, and he plays opposite of the super annoying people in the rest of the thing. In 2003, he landed a spat of films which include Love Actually. And then the following year, he was in Shaun of the Dead followed by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe in 2005.
And continually worked consistently. Did Sherlock in 2010. 2012, he started The Hobbit trilogy. He was in World's End, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and then he joined the Marvel Universe in 2016 in Civil War, Black Panther, and Wakanda Forever. The latest thing I've seen him in, there's a BBC series out there called The Responder, a very different kind of Martin Freeman Martin Freeman than you're used to seeing.
So if you get a chance to check that out, I would. He's got six upcoming projects: Clybourne Park, Flavia, Let God Sort It Out, Let's Love, Pretend I'm Not Here, and The Adam Trials
Yeah, so he's pretty busy
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Susie Porter plays his wife in this film, Kay. She's an Australian-born actress who attended the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, so she's a classically trained actress.
She's worked on stage and on screen starting in 1996 with a film called Idiot Box. You would probably know her because she was in Star Wars Episode II. She played Hermione Bagwa, who was just a background character. All of her lines and everything, they stripped from her and gave to a robot called WA-7. She's she's physically playing someone, one person, but her voice and all of her lines went to the robot that she actually did voiceover for. She was also in Nightmares and Dreamscapes and a long run on a series called Wentworth
Okay
She has five upcoming projects, Dusty, Fear is the Rider, Forever Young, The F Ward. Ward, not word. And then she's returning to a series that she's done in the past called The Artful Dodger. She's doing an episode there.
Okay.
She als- she loves animals, and she's a big supporter of LGBTQ communities. That's from her bio. Simone Landers plays Tumi. This was her first film
And she did fantastic
She did. She's been in five pieces total including playing an Asgardian child in Thor: Love and Thunder.
So she's a member of the MCU as well.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: She was saying that she loved it so much 'cause she got to stay up really late and she got to make lots of new friends.
Stephen: Typical kid stuff
Rhys: everybody else, like Martin Freeman and Yolanda and Ben, they were all like, "She was such a pro. She took to this right away. She's definitely a rising star," so
can definitely see Martin Freeman being the nurturing type with kids o- on set. I d- ha- don't have any proof of that. I had n- nothing to say, nobody said anything. But he just strikes me as the type that would take them under their wing and guide them and help them and make them feel good.
Not that others wouldn't, but there's a lot that would be like, "Okay, I'm done with my scene. Get me, I'll be in my trailer,"
yeah. Yeah. He's, he comes across as a super nice guy. We mentioned Andy Rodrera- Rodreda. He plays the riverside father who's the one who has the birthday party at the start of the film and the rather ominous party at the end. He's an Australian actor. He's another graduate of the NIDA. He's been in 35 part- pieces, but for our purposes the only thing you'd know is that he was in the short Cargo, and he's in this one as well,
got it
The last cast members we're gonna talk about are Rosie, the infant. The Rosie was played by two sets of infant- two sets of twins
Which they usually do. They try
Well, they usually use one. I think they used two because of the punishing conditions of the environment they were in. So they had a spare set on hand, if you will. Marlee Jane and Lily Anne McPherson Robin-- Dobbins, I'm sorry and Finlay and Nova Sjoberg, and this is the only film they've all done.
I think Marlee Jane looks like she's trying to do more work 'cause now she's maybe eight or something like
Probably got an agent.
And it's funny you say that 'cause there were a couple scenes where I'm like, "Is that the same kid?" So they must have…
Chances are not
Yeah,
yeah, so I will say I can't watch this film without a tear to the eye when it-- you get to the end of this movie. It's just, it's so emotionally impactful
What would you do? Like you said
Yeah. Yeah. You sit there and you wonder about it. And it was also important to them, and I don't know that they actually wrote it this way, it's just, I think it's the way it worked out.
But you have Martin Freeman, who's definitively a British actor, as the father in an Australian film. So they wrote him as an expat. He's a British expat living in Australia when this all went down. And it shows in how he seems surprised by culture and things that he comes across as he travels through this thing
Yeah, and I make a few comments about that with his character arc. Starts off kind of naive and stupid, and by the end, "Okay, this is what's happening and I'm much smarter." A little too late, he gets it
Yeah. All right, so let's talk about the film
Let's go. And before we get started on that, in between here let me just hit up, I I always put a thing at the end saying, "Hey, if you like this, go subscribe, go like us." Telling everybody here that's listening, if you like us, please go subscribe off the website, go give us some likes, whatever you use to listen to podcasts or on YouTube or whatever, 'cause it, it-- We're at the point where we need more of those to help us grow more.
The more audience we get and all of that, the more we're gonna wanna do this. But it gives us more flexibility and offers to do other things with it instead of always trying to build up a bit. So really we do this out of love, obviously, but we'd love to get some more people that like it and come with us each time we do one of these
Yeah, and we've got the next two seasons already mapped out, so if you're curious to see what's gonna happen
Yep. All right, let's go
All right. The film starts with this big overarching view of the Australian landscape. Again, back to that whole Trollhunter conversation we had where you're like, "So many of these things, you never get to see the landscape of where they're at." You're getting to see lots of Australia in this one.
Yes
There are fires burning periodically around here, it's a post-apocalyptic kind of film, so you expect there to be fires just burning all over the place
Yeah, and I was looking at this, I'm like, "These are in the middle of freaking nowhere. Why are they burning?" And I like that they didn't focus and show you. They didn't tell you. It's th-
true. By the end, you understand
Oh, yeah, they show you here in a little bit, but not when it's, flying over the landscape to start.
Yeah, in fact, you see this girl in pink just running through the desert. She's not running from something. She, it's not a panicked run. It's more along the lines of, "I need to get from point A to point B, and I'm under the age of 14, so I'm naturally gonna run there."
Stephen: Gotta hate 'em.
Rhys: We're gonna bounce it back and forth. Most of the film's gonna focus on Martin Freeman's character, but Tumi is the girl in pink, and so frequently there's this little kind of bouncing back and forth until their paths cross.
And it's done very well with two different things, 'cause you're wondering for a while, like, how are these two meeting up and what's going to happen? You know it's going to, it's just how do they go together?
And in fact, their paths cross a couple times, and the first time I'm like, "Oh, that's where they meet." Nope. They just keep going their own separate ways until they meet up again later, so
And it's that fate destiny thing where you can't escape it
Yeah. There's a boat on a river. It's a houseboat, and we got baby Rosie living there, and we have her mother, and we have Andy on board the ship. And Andy's driving the boat, and there's-- it's just… It could be a vacation, for what-- we know what's going in. We know what's go- what's up going in, but it's just that kind of nonchalant kind of thing. He's driving along. He sees children playing on the shore, and he gets excited. Like I suppose a dad who's been isolated with his kids will. And he goes out, and he's calling to them, and the father shows up and just stares at him and then lifts up his shirt and shows that he's got a gun and, so much for that friendly birthday party.
We're just gonna keep on trucking
And again, like you said, we know what this movie is, but if you did go in unknowing, the, the fires at the beginning are a little what's that all about?" But everything else seems pretty normal. Okay, so the guy with the kids is an a-hole. Forget about him. It could be interpreted different if you don't know what the movie's about, and it's done well
Yeah. They're fishing out these government provided kits out of the water. And it, the kits, they don't go into detail too much with them in this, but you can tell it's like a medical emergency kind of kit thing, and there's tons of them that he's pulling out
Which I like also, they didn't show where they came from. You gotta wonder what's going on, where did these all come from?
Yeah, and good design on them 'cause they float. They'd be horrible if they sank. The wife's sitting there and pointing out they're running out of food. They only have three days food left, and that's not cool. And they have this debate between the two of them. She wants to go over land to look for more food.
He's like, "It's not safe. We're gonna stick to the water. We're headed to this X on the map that looks like it's promising, and this is the fastest way." And she's still convinced they need to go to shore. But now we cut back to the girl in pink. She's putting leaves on the bottoms of her shoes, which seems like an odd thing to do, kids do the darndest things. She's got this stone that's got pictures carved in it, and what looks like maybe a little shrine or maybe a grave site. And that's all the more you get. We're going back to the boat
Did you see what that was though?
I tried to stop it, but
she had a, a rock with stick figures on it, and she had another rock. She made a TV with a remote. She was pretending to watch TV
okay. That's funny. I, it's the kind of shit I used to do
Yeah, exactly. And, all of these things, including that, it's like, okay, she's pretending to watch TV. Why isn't she watching TV? There's a whole lot of little things here
Yep. They're sailing along and Andy finds a sailboat that's in bad shape. It's listed to one side. He leaves the houseboat a distance away. He's got a little dinghy that he rows over, and he's got this mirror on a pole. He's poking it down there and scoping out the inner side of the cabin.
And again, if you came into this completely cold, aside from the fires in the beginning, this… and the guy with the gun on the shore, that might just be a D-bag. But this ha- this is your first sense that something's seriously wrong, 'cause there's a nice boat just sitting sideways in the water. He does climb down inside.
He finds a whole bunch of goodies, like dry goods and canned goods, a bottle of wine. There's a sound from the back cabin door, and he turns his head to it and nothing seems to happen. So he figures that discretion's the better part of valor and climbs out with his finds that he has and heads back So he
this definitely feels one of those that could be a video game and has the same type of choices in it,
oh yeah who is it? Something Tale Games, they did The Walking Dead
Yeah, the not twisted tale, but y- yeah. Yeah
Yeah. It feels like one of those where hit X or Y to check out the door. Yeah.
He does this cute little thing to show his wife that he found all this stuff 'cause he's fishing, and all of a sudden he reels up a can of food. And he assures her that, she's upset 'cause he went by himself, didn't tell anyone he sh- he was going.
She must've been asleep. He's like, "It was safe. It's not a big deal." And she's like did they have a razor there?" 'Cause he's all scruffy. And he said, "I found…" He found a considerable amount of food. He's gonna take a nap. So he and Rosie go in the cabin for a nap. Now, here's the trick about you poo-pooing your wife and telling her that it's not a dangerous situation, because she decides she's gonna go over there and check it out
Yeah I thought the same thing. It's it if he hadn't said that, what would it have changed,
yeah, absolutely. 'Cause she goes over she looks at the bottle of wine and it's for their anniversary that he, he wrote a note for it already
So he has hope. He feels that there will be life later
Yeah. He puts a lot of faith in this X on the map, and we find out when he gets there that it's misplaced. She heads over and she drops into the cabin without checking it out. She's not wearing waders. She does manage to find a razor. Good on her. That razor's been sitting in the water a while.
I'm sure it's not all that sharp. It would probably really hurt
Yeah, and th- she didn't get shaving cream either, just the razor
So she hears that noise from the cabin door, and not unlike her husband's side, she's gonna leave. But just as she gets to the exit, something pulls her back in- inside Andy wakes up to find Rosie crying, which isn't uncommon with kids. He picks her up and he asks where mom is, and he sees some blood on the floor.
And it's a small trail of blood that goes, oh, and there's a razor. And it heads into the bathroom, and he looks in and his wife is there, and she has been bitten. She's got this Fitbit that she throws onto her arm right away, and it seems to track how many hours since you've been bitten. You get it on and you hit this thing and it takes off
Yeah, in these kits, I don't know if you saw the-- There's multiple versions or multiple movies called Silent Night, but there's one from three or four years ago where it, the, the garbage pollution in the environment is destroying the world. It's like sweeping across the world and the government created kits so you can take these pills and kill yourself before the thing gets to you.
And that's what this reminded me. I'm like, wow, y- you gotta wonder, when your government is creating kill yourself kits. It seems to be something that movies like to use, but you gotta trust the government to not just wanna kill people.
It's true. There's actually nothing wrong, we just don't like the people in South. So you actually get a look in the kit, and it does have this self-euthanizing device, which is basically like those bolt guns they use to slaughter animals.
Stephen: That's what I thought. It was a little warped.
Rhys: and hit the button, and dunk, pops you in the head. So there are multiple stages to this disease. There's convulsions, there's fainting spells. You start to ooze this c- what I… Like a honey jelly kind of stuff from the wound. Then you start digging in the dirt. You start chewing on a wall. Y- like you'll just stand there and do it, and then you just have this overwhelming need to eat raw flesh.
And then your eyes and your mouth just get coated in this honey stuff, and then boom, you're just a full-on zombie at that point.
Yeah. It's got some interesting twists on zombies
does. In fact, I think there's a movie called Contagion. And next to that, this is probably the best film I've seen that goes through the steps of biologically what's happening to you while you're doing this
Unlike Return of the Living Dead, where they just start screaming and get cold.
yeah, they climb out of the ground. Yeah, they get cold and they get pale.
But you should go watch Return of the Living Dead if you get a chance, 'cause it's a fun movie, especially the, the dog
Yeah, for sure. Now their arguments have reversed. She's like, "You've gotta go straight to that X." And he's like, "No, we've gotta go across land." They're arguing each other's opposite points. And she insists that when it's time for her to turn, that it's her call. She can take her own life.
He still seems under the false delusion that maybe that something else bit her in the river and that it's not actual people bite, bites
right, or he m- she might not turn. Maybe she doesn't have it. Maybe it's not as strong or real. It definitely goes through, part of his whole character arc starts off not only naive, but now he's d- just denying it, and he does things because he's naive and denying it. Some of the things he does, for the next half of the movie are like, "What are you thinking, dude?"
But we have for- we have hindsight foresight, I guess
The 12 stages of grief kind of thing.
Yeah
So they're walking along and you find corpses of these things that have been burnt with spears stuck in them with their heads buried in the sand.
There's our fires
Yes. Now we're gonna cut to Tumi, and she's drawing a picture, and in this picture it's her and a guy named Willie and this tall figure.
Eventually we find out Willie is her father. The tall figure is the clever man who is the medicine man for th- for their society.
And where do they always find these super skinny witch doctor guys? It's like the common look whenever you get a movie set in Australia particularly
Not that many fat Aborigines, I don't know
I guess, that lived to be that age
Yeah. She does draw a picture of a zombie with his head in a hole in the ground like we just saw in the previous scene. And then she goes out and grabs this dead rabbit carcass, makes this chirping sound, and throws it into this pit, and there are crunching sounds as something devours it.
So
we haven't really seen any zombies yet
Aside from the ones that have been burnt, you're right. Yeah
But those are just bodies. We don't-- you could argue you don't know what they are.
Yes. Andy and the family find a car. It's like a, a Cherokee kinda deal. Mom finds a car seat. Andy finds this gas cap and the keys. And they're hurrying to load everything up, and Andy's filling it up with fuel from the boat. And his wife, Kay, is sitting in the seat, and she notes that she's sliming the seat from her wound 'cause she's got that honey stuff coming out, so she's definitely infected.
And then she sees one of these zombies shambling towards the car. And instead of pounding on the window or honking the horn, she turns on the turn signal so it doesn't make any noise
Yeah, which was smart of her, but, her husband is still not quite up to his zombie survival skills yet. He's only looking around like this
Yeah. He sees his turn signal flashing and then he looks back at the other one, not sure what's going on. Then he l- gets it, and he gets it and they drive off just in time. He's lucky it started or this would've just been the battery
Yeah.
in the car
To another, a different version of Cujo
Yeah. And you have some more fabulous shots of Australia as they're driving through the countryside. And it's really funny to me, he's driving along and he goes to pull off, and he uses his turn signal. And I'm like, that is so ingrained in you because there's no one to signal anything to
Dude I've turned on my signal to leave my driveway at times without thinking about it.
Yeah. He's looking at this map while she's changing the baby. It's a pretty clever little, cleverly little done shot 'cause he looks at the map, bounce out to Kay changing the baby, bounce back to him and the map, and he has the map up, and he pulls it down, and it's just the baby sitting on the hood of the car.
And he goes out, and Kay is now going through convulsions. So she's definitely going through the storied steps of this disease
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: And it, I liked it, that is one of the things that took it away from a lot of zombie shows, movies, because it showed how quick parts of this can progress and hit. She was fine, smiling, working on the baby. Oh my God, she's gone. Like two seconds,
and I think that's another interesting thing is that it's a lot more how you end up with it and a lot less of the actual finished zombies themselves.
Yeah. Yeah
anything else, "28 Days Later," "The Walking Dead," all that stuff, you get lots of gratuitous shots of just the zombies, so you can see how horrible they are.
You almost never get like a solid they're just standing still shot of these zombies.
It's more about the people than the creature,
yep
Cut back to Toomey. She's got a snake now, and she throws it down into the hole, and there's no, no crying, no screaming, crunching sounds, and now she's worried 'cause whatever she had down there isn't down there anymore they're back, they're driving the car. Kay has started to secrete that gooey honey stuff.
She insists she's getting out of the car. She's like, "This is it. I'm just gonna get out." And she opens the door to jump out of the moving car. He pulls her back in. And Kay has come to the point that she's like I'm just dying. Let's just do this and be done with it." And Andy he's not having it.
He's not gonna do that. She insists that, "No, this is what it is. It's her choice." And he's like, "No." And he puts her in the car and rips the door handle off on the inside and shuts the door. So now she's trapped
Right. Which I thought was interesting, and that, that was a adrenaline-fueled ripping on that door handle to pull that off like that.
yeah. And it's funny to me because I just recently saw 28 Years Later, the first one. I haven't seen the second one out yet. And it struck me that in the middle of this zombie film, there's this whole talk about dying with dignity. And I'm like, "Oh, it turns out they aren't the first ones to do that," 'cause in Cargo they talk about that too, where she's saying, "No, it's my choice.
I wanna decide how and when." And he's refusing to let her do that. So now we're doing some rapid fire cutting between them and Thoomi's looking for something, someone we assume. And then not unlike the loved ones, there's a conversation. Martin looks up and there's a guy in the middle of the street, and he swerves to miss him and hits a tree
Yeah. That whole, I was like, "Seriously? You were going…" First of all, I understand he's going that fast to get his wife there, but he has to I don't know. It just seems like the driving escape ability, w- m- if you were on the road and somebody like swerved into your lane, you have to go clear across 20 lanes to avoid it?
There that's I don't know. It seemed a little s- too much of a setup, but whatever
I see it as, yes, a setup, but you, if it wasn't, if it was real life, it is just like the absolute perfect convergence of all of the bad luck you could possibly have. I'm on a narrow dirt road where there happen to be trees, even though I'm driving through a place that's almost all just hill and scrub.
And there's a guy, and, I go to turn and the tires break on the dirt and I'm
There, there's five people in a 20-mile radius and they're all right here right now.
Yes
So again, the fate and destiny, can you escape it? Guess not
Yeah. The, the car hits a tree, it stops, and a branch from the tree has impaled Kay and pinned her to the seat. She's gonna get her death anyways. This is g- probably more painful than the little euthanization kit would've been
Yeah. Yeah. And also, this whole thing here it-- I guess if you die in some way while you're infected, you turn faster. That seems a common thing but it looks like the stages go faster
And technically, we don't know that she actually died. She might have just been grievously wounded and it accelerated everything.
'Cause it kinda happens at the end as well.
He's g- gotta get out of there and he's gotta get the baby out of there, but he passes out from smacking his head on the dash.
He wakes to hear the baby crying, and sh- Lu's written on the door, "Save her," in her own blood
Yeah
Hey
Shh. Okay.
He's trying to get out, but she manages to bite him in the arm before he can
Which is another one of those naive choices not knowing, how to handle yourself in the situation. It's like, dude, of course that's what's going to happen
Yeah he crawls out, gets the baby out, sets Rose down in the dis- away from the car, walks back and euthanizes his wife
Which, which, okay, I understand it's a zombie apocalypse, but who walks their daughter across the field, l- sets them down and leaves her? Even with nobody else around, you didn't think anybody was around and you just about hit somebody. I'm like, that's a bad parenting regardless of zombie apocalypse
Definitely bad parenting, but a really good shot. The camera shot was phenomenal
There you go. That, it was the cameraman that decided it
Cinematographers like, "Forget health and safety. Just put the baby here."
Right
Yeah. He looks at the wound on his arm and then his daughter. He takes the Fitbit device off his wife, puts it on his arm, and resets it, 'cause now he's got a whole new set of hours to do
Which that was an interesting twist. I'm glad they did that because the movie would not have been nearly as good if that hadn't happened. I think it, it was a little contrived, but it had to happen
But it is kinda clever, right? So if you do have this kind of pandemic and they put out information, they're gonna say "This is how many hours before this happens, and this is how many hours before this happens." And if you give everybody a timer, then they can actually track the stuff. 'Cause you've got things to do before you off yourself.
You gotta make sure you get it all in, in an effort to calm the baby down a bit, he sprays a few loose puffs of his wife's perfume. And I saw somewhere they actually mentioned what the brand is of the perfume that's used throughout the… I don't know what it was, but. Then he sees the guy who was in the middle of the road, and he's yelling at him, and it turns, and it's a zombie.
Or a viral. I'm sorry, it's a viral. But he's got this bit tied to his head, so he can't bite anything, and his hands are tied.
And Toomey comes running out, and she says, "Leave my dad alone." And then she cuts her hand and smears blood on a tree, which draws Willie's attention, that's who the guy is draws his attention, and he walks over, and she just runs through the woods marking trees, and he follows her from tree to tree
Yeah, which was interesting, but like you said, they didn't get together, so you're still wondering how the, how's this going to happen?"
Right. Was she just in the movie just to get him into this crisis kind of thing?
Yeah, which I, that would've sucked if that's all she was for. I'm glad they did more
We get lots of stunning vistas of Australia as he's off walking with the baby in the backpack and he finally gets to the hospital, and it's not much of a hospital. That X, yeah, that X he had on the h- on the map of, this is where everything's gonna be great, it's just an abandoned place with a house and maybe a trailer
Yeah, and that's a common world apocalypse zombie theme. It's better at this location. They've got safety, they've got this, and you always get those characters going, "It's bullshit. Don't listen to it." But you always got the characters that have to get there 'cause it's much better
And he gets there and he starts going through, rooting through the stuff, and all of a sudden there's like this noise, and he turns and there's this old lady sitting there who turns on this light. And she says, "What's the count on the watch say?" Like she knows right away.
Oh yeah
he's like, "46 hours." So then she just comes up and starts to treat his arm, and she's "It's too late to do anything for it except for to hide it."
She was played by Chris McQuade
is a, which is, sorry, which is a subtle thing except to hide it. So you gotta think this has been going on long enough that people know about it, know what happens, know what's going on, and you know then, like that father with the gun, there's people like, "Oh, you're bit? You're dead 'cause I don't wanna risk my family."
It was a very subtle, without showing a whole nother scene to get that point across
For sure. She was played by Chris McQuaid, who is an Australian actress. She's been in 99 projects. Of them all, you're only gonna know she was in Strictly Ballroom, and she was in the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie.
Stephen: Okay
Rhys: everything else is pretty Australian, but she used to teach the local Aboriginal children, and she points out how well they as a society are doing from everybody else.
They sensed it and came together as a community, and they've been weathering the storm so much better than everyone else. She says they went back to their lands. In other words, they just left all of the inhabited places and went back out into the outback, into the bush Andy is contemplating leaving Rosie with Etta.
And as he's talking about it, he walks over and he sees that she's had treatments for brain cancer. She's probably not got much time left either, and so he can't really leave her here
Which sucks. You live through that and you gotta spend the last bit of time worrying about being a zombie, which is brain dead anyway. It's an interesting choice in the movie
Yeah. He goes outside and he hears this kind of rhythmic beating, or maybe he doesn't, maybe that's just for us, but it's overlaid with his scene. And then we cut back to where the aboriginals are out there burning the bodies of the dead. And one of them's beating a couple sticks together rhythmically to draw them in to the sound.
One of them is yelling for Tumi who is purposely keeping herself out of view of this person. It's her mother. She's hidden her father away from all the rest of these, all the rest of them because they are just killing any zombies they come across and then burning their bodies
It seems obvious. Young girl doesn't wanna lose her father but she's really doing a good job and very smart about it
Oh, she's in- incredible. And they, we get this flashback to, like the elders passing the knowledge on. We get Willie sitting with a group of them around a fire, and he pulls out these sinew bindings, and he's they're all like grossed out by them. "What's this for?" It's to make spears."
And he's like, "Don't worry, it's a bit like mom's spaghetti." And then he uses it to tie this up. And then Mr. Cleverman comes up the like witch doctor type figure, and he addresses the incoming plague with the father. Everyone's poisoned the land, it's gonna be bad for them, and they're gonna be bringing it down on us, inadvertently.
So it's like a setup for the movie, but we're already like a third of the way through the movie before they do it
And it strengthens the these are the people that are gonna make it. They're the ones that know what's going on and they're ready
Yeah. Andy's awake, he's pacing about, he's frustrated with the situation. He grabs this razor, he's looking in the mirror, suicidal, but then he just falls to the floor in convulsions. So here he is up to that stage of the progression of the disease. In the morning, he wakes up still on the floor, but he's covered with a p- blanket with a pillow, and he finds Etta and Rosie outside. Turns out she used to teach Toomey, and she knew Willie, and she says don't go towards them because they have hunting parties that are out killing people who are infected." So she warns him against actually going to see them
Which is why she covered it up too
Yep. Another good reason to cover it, yeah. So he heads off with Rosie. They find a set of ruins to kinda rest at, and he hears a gunshot in the distance. He comes across a pickup truck. It's got a line from the pickup truck that goes back to a gas canister. There's a guy who's in the hole. It looks like he's pinned under one of the gas canisters.
He's like, "That's mine," talking about the truck. Raises his rifle and fires, and you're like, "Good Lord, man." But here he's shooting an approaching zombie in the head. And he points out that the military base has fallen, so there's no help coming. In fact, they've all turned into zombies. It's even worse. And he's like, "Hey, why don't you help me outta here, and I'll give you a place for you and the kid to rest?"
And he's like where are the keys?" And the guy pulls out the keys, and he's like, "Don't you fuck me." And he throws him the keys. And he doesn't. He's Martin Freeman. He's a nice guy, right? So he p-
And I, we were talking about people's natural selves and whatever. He needs help. He's asking somebody for help, but he's immediately distrustworthy of somebody else. He's like, "Don't you screw me over or I'll screw you over." And it's, goes back to that psychological thing of those that suspect somebody of something are probably the ones that are doing it,
yeah. They, he pulls him out and they end up driving off, and they come up to this gas pump area that's surrounded by fence and stuff. It's fairly secure. His name's Vic. He's got a wife he refers to as Rainy. She's shy and standoffish
To her husband a lot.
And to be fair to Andy too, like she's not like warm and embracing. Vic walks off to get cleaned up and he's like, "Hey, take care of him, will ya?" And so she makes, starts to make tea. I don't know that it was something she would've wanted to do
Yeah, I, but I picked up really quick on the, "Oh, he's not really married to her, and she's not happy with this situation."
And as far as her flightiness goes, I think it comes from that because she's "He doesn't bring people back." And so she might be thinking that this guy's just as bad as he is, and now she… Yeah. And so Vic has a plan for when the world goes back to normal. She used to cook in a canteen at a gas field where Vic worked, and that's all the more of the story we actually get right now.
Vic comes out and tells Andy it's time to go and leaves Rosie with Rainy, and which Andy's not crazy about, but then they head off. And here's what he's doing. He has a cage, and in the cage he puts a person and a bunch of like blood and entrails around it and draws in a whole bunch of zombies, and then he shoots them,
Takes great joy in it.
Yeah
Then he walks up and he loots the dead zombies.
Yes
This is his retirement plan, I guess
And okay, so you know, it's a zombie apocalypse. If you're looting people lying dead on the ground, ah, that doesn't, that's not as bad of an issue as it is when we're in the world we are right now. When it's a zombie apocalypse, okay, it's not going to do you any good, but okay. But if you're actively using live people to bait them and draw them in, you're leaving the people alive and shooting the zombies, great, but yeah, that really gets evil.
Now, that's an even more evil act than you would think normally
The live person in this case happens to be Toomey. Toomey is chained up in there, and his whole thing is, "I'm gonna collect everything that I possibly can that's shiny and good, so when this all goes back to normal I'm gonna be the wealthiest guy around and everyone's gonna worship me
A- and honestly, he's not really wrong. I- if they could get rid of the virus and things settle down, he's right. That's how people think and how people would. But I'm pic- picturing more, now it's Fallout with a little shack.
Yeah, 'cause typically if you're actually gonna overcome this kind of thing, it's gonna take an organized effort to do an organized effort tends to lead towards government, and a government's gonna look at the, how much this guy has and either make him a partner or demonize him and take him out and just take what he's got.
Yeah
You're flipping a coin here depending on who ends up in charge. 'Cause he's not gonna solve the problem
a- and in his mind he's thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna go get money," but you have to establish money. It's gonna be barter. You're gonna go get chickens, buddy
Yeah. Back at the house, Rainey is trying to entertain Rosie and finds some of the honey goo on her that came off of her father. Then we cut back to Vic and Andy, and he has the Clever Man in a cage, and he's "The wells are all mine. This is all mine. You can kiss my ass." And he pours blood and stuff on, throws stuff on the roof, and he's "Piss off."
So it's really solidifies the fact that Vic is a complete bastard.
Absolutely evil
Yep. They come back to the compound. Vic gives
But what I, sorry, sorry, I will point out though, he expects Andy to be like him and agree with him. He expects this is how people are and this is the right thing, or this is the powerful, better thing or whatever
And we run into this all the time, right? So many people who are doing things that you or I or anybody are like, "That's completely wrong. That's heinous. That's horrible," but they don't see it that way, and there's a whole group of people like them who don't see it that way. And you just naturally assume that everybody's on your side of thinking is really not the case.
There's lots of people on… and in this case, it's the same thing. Vic is like, "You're a man, you survived. You must be a survivor like me."
Right
really, just- Yeah. Andy's playing with Rosie in an effort to get her to sleep back at the compound. He has this arm tremor, and he takes one of the government kits, and he goes out in the darkness, and he pulls out the euthanizer and sticks it to his temple, and he's having a hard time doing it
Which i- in some ways is a little bit of that's a jerk move. You're just dumping your baby on somebody, and they're not in the best of situations. But also what choice does he have it seems too,
that's exactly his kind of thinking because Rainey comes out and she's, "Please don't." And he's like you'll be fine." And she's like, "I will, and I'll take care of your kid, just not here." And he's like, "But it's safe here." And she's like, "He's not my husband. He actively watched everyone else die and used them so he could escape."
And I've… She's basically been his prisoner ever since
Acquired wife
Yes. And so they're like, "Okay maybe we escape then."
And this is a difference too. It shows-- and you get this a lot in movies, the- these type of movies. You can explore multiple people. This wife, this woman, completely different than Andy's wife earlier. She was strong and independent and, more forceful. This one's like, "Oh my God, I don't know what to do.
At least someone's protecting me. I hate every bit of it, but-"
Yeah. Vic catches them out there talking and accuses Andy of trying to steal his girl which is ironic, and then just knocks him out. When Andy comes to, he's chained up in the cage with Tubby, and there's fresh entrails on the roof. And he needs her to help, and she's "I need the keys to the clever man's cage." He's like, "Fine, let's get this done," because they're chained together. So he very cleverly takes this piece of strap- strapping that's attached to the cage, ties it around the entrails, and tosses it in the distance, which is where the zombies go, and they start pulling on it, and when they do, he's hooked it up so it raises the gate
So M- MacGyver during the apocalypse
Yes.
And he slips out, and then of course the gate comes down, and there's this tense moment, and then the zombies pull some more, and he gets Toomey out, and they run off. They head back to the compound. They sneak in, they wake Rainy, who is funny, she has to sleep on the floor next to the door because she's offended him.
You can see she's got a brand-new smack on the side of her face. They wake her up. Andy takes a gun, and he's about to leave, and then Toomey's like the keys." So he goes back and grabs the keys. They sneak back out to the truck. Vic wakes up, comes out with his gun, and I don't-- I suppose Andy just runs, which might have been the right thing to do considering it's dark out and all of the lights are focused on the compound.
If he could get past that line, he'd be fine.
He takes off to run. Vic pulls up the gun to shoot, and Rainy just jumps in front of the overcoming shot and is killed.
But Toomey and Andy do manage to get away
I don't know if she meant any more than to distract him. I don't know if she realized she was right in the line of fire or, from that angle though, that's a bad shot if you're aiming at Andy
And so that's the debate. If she would've taken off with him, would all three of them gotten to the light line first? But she hesitated, they took off and she was scared. She didn't wanna go out, so she hesitated, and then she did what, she did what she thought was best and ended up shot for it
A- and for whatever the actual reason is, Vic does seem upset by this and d- and really upset that she's daddy killed her
Yes. So much so that they actually get away. They get to the clever man's cage, and he's just gone
Ah, you gotta wonder about these medicine men.
Didn't need keys or anything. He's just gone. So Toomey is hitting them in a cave when Vic comes roaring out in his truck, and he throws out all of these vile, horrible threats for the vile, horrible man he is. But eventually he loses his patience and leaves And so once he's gone, Andy's sitting there trying to break the chain with a rock, and I'm like, "Dude, that's not gonna work."
And he looks over and Toomie's got the chain off, and she's like, "I got keys." So he undoes his shackles. But the disease has progressed to the wall eating now. He's leaning on the wall and rubbing his face on it till it bleeds
They start walking and you get this kind of road conversation that you get in these kind of movies.
He's like, what's the deal with the clever man?" She's like, "He's a magic man. He can heal you and recapture your soul." And the thing I love about their relationship is Andy is so straightforward with her all the time. She's He's like, "You think that your dad's the way he is 'cause he's lost his soul?"
She's like, "Yeah." And he's like, "There's a lot of people this has happened to." She's like, "My dad's different." And he's like, "I don't think he is. I think he's gonna die just like you and just like me, and a lot of smart people have been trying to fix this and they haven't been able to
He's very straightforward, but he's never dismissive or condescending of her beliefs and thoughts.
not mean about it. He's just I don't think so, and here's why." And because it happens a lot in this, and it's just this really cool rapport they have with each other
Yeah. Yeah. He gives it enough that this is her beliefs, this is her thinking. She could be wrong, but he respects it enough to l- just, "Okay," and let it go
Yep. She takes off and to check on her father, 'cause they're close to where she kept him. He's not there, but she can find on… There's a tree with a body in it, and his coat is on it. And she sits down there, and she grabs a rock and starts hitting herself in the head. Andy stops her, and she calls him a gubba.
And he's like, "What's going on?" And she's "We bury our dead in the trees so the ghosts can't get them." And that's how they refer to the virals. They call them ghosts.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: And he's like, "That's, that wasn't your dad anymore. I'm sorry, but it wasn't." This is more of that straight talk they have. And he's like, I need to find the river, and Rosie and I need to go, and we need to find her someplace safe."
And she's like, "I don't care about you or your baby." And he's like, "I don't think you mean that." And then he's checks his watch. He's like, "I can't stay, so I gotta go." And he takes off, and he has another attack. He has one of the digging in the soil attacks.
Yeah, right there
Yes. And he just starts doing it, and Tumi's still sitting there feeling upset, and then she hears Rosie cry.
And we next cut to Andy coming to his senses and wondering where Rosie is, and he turns and sees Tumi has her, and Tumi is guiding them to the river, where he finds a boat and starts heading upriver. They even get to his old boat, old houseboat. Doesn't stop, but just makes note that it's there and just keeps going.
And they get to the river camp, and there's no one there. Tumi puts leaves on the edges of her shoes, and he's "Why?" She's like, "So it hides my footprints." And he's like, "From the ghosts?" And she's like, "No, from my mom." So she's not only worried about the ghosts, she's gotta worry about her mom
Living and the dead
Yes. The camp is very much abandoned.
There's no one there. It looks like they left in kind of a hurry. The cake on the table's still fresh. So Toomey starts eating some of that.
Yeah, she doesn't look real happy about it though
now Andy gets out this first aid kit, and he cleans off her head wound, and he's "Why did you do that?" And she's "It's one of the old way practices that we don't usually do anymore."
It's so when she hits her head, it will heal, and when it's healed, her heart should be healed as well. Which I thought was a nice little poetic thing. Sadomasochistic, but still
Stephen: Ja, well
Rhys: She, he's like, "We'll just wait for people to come back." And he goes outside, and Tumi's playing like a DS that she found laying there, and then she's just going through everything.
There's some perfume and all this other stuff. Andy finds the family, and the dad is there digging this very large hole, and his wife and kids are a little ways off. He's got a wristband on. And Andy's like, "Wait a second." He's like, "You can take the caravan. You can take the car if you can get it started."
Yeah, the guy's attitude is totally different now
Yes. And Andy's "I don't want any of those things." And the guy pulls out this gun, and he's got six rounds. And he says enough to kill the four of them and Andy and Rosie because he said, "I will not leave them here like this." And you can see he's got a big bite mark on his shoulder. Andy asks him not to do that. And the dad says, "Tell the ba- say goodbye to the baby, kids." And the kids are like, "Bye-bye, baby." And Andy walks away. And the father's "Take the two. Take the two shots that I have." Back at the caravan, Toomie's looking at pictures of her father, and she decides she's gonna pull the leaves off her shoes.
So there's a turning point in her character. She's no longer running from her mom. Andy's on his way back. He hears some gunshots, and then the father stumbles out a few steps and shoots himself in the head. And then Andy does go back to take the gun
Yeah, which I thought, wow, this guy is really dedicated to doing the one thing he can to help Andy and then the baby, is take the guns and off yourself, a- instead of just fine, you left. I'm just gonna shoot it, and it'll sit here." He follows Andy so the gun is right there within his grasp
I hate to say it, but it reminds me of the ending of The Mist, just not quite as glum
The ending of the Mist movie, 'cause the short story
Oh yeah. Yeah, the movie. Andy finds himself sitting on the ground contemplating his own suicide, and then Rosie's in the background out of focus, and Tumi comes out of the caravan. And Rosie says her first word. She says, "Daddy." Tumi walks over and picks her up and gives her to Andy, and she tells…
And Andy's "You took the leaves off." And she's like, "I'm ready to go home." And she asks if he wants her people, and he's like, "Yeah, I do." And so he's decided that's the best place to leave his daughter is with the Aborigines, which makes all kinds of sense 'cause they are surviving this. Yeah. And so we get a little bit of their language. Atla means fire, 'cause they can see smoke in the distance. 'Cause she's like, "Look, it's not that far," 'cause you can see it just over the hill. And then she starts, Tumi starts putting marks on Rosie with this white paint, and it's so the ghosts can't track them.
And Andy's like do you need to do me?" She's like, "No, 'cause you already smell like them."
Yep. And I like the fact that he didn't bother to even stop her or rush her or anything like that. He let her do her thing. Again, I don't think like you, I don't believe this, but I'm respecting your thinking and what you do.
It's worked for you so far, so who am I to say
Yeah, I'm bit, you're not.
Yeah. So they gotta tr- cross this train trestle, and as they do, you can see the infected below and eating I don't know, a cow or a water buffalo or something. And he, you can see in his face, like the urges to eat that is like coming across him.
But he keeps going on, and there's this tunnel they have to go through, and we all know nothing good ever happens in a tunnel
Stephen: Right
Rhys: But it's
Stephen: true to form
Rhys: Yeah, it's not exactly what you think though, because all the virals who are in there are leaning on the walls doing the wall-eating thing, and she says they're hibernating. And so again, we find out that the people are the monsters, not the monsters, because Vic happens to be at the end of the tunnel. And he's going through, a bunch of stuff over by a fire, seeing if there's anything of any value And then Rosie cries. And I will give this to Andy, he instantly knows as soon as she does, stuff's going down.
There's no "Did he hear that?" No, it's just, "All right, we're caught. We gotta figure out…" So he starts moving
he's not the same character he was an hour and a half
Exactly. He doesn't have this kind of, "Oh, I've got hope." That's not what he's got. Now he's got a plan. So
Right
he puts them inside this vehicle that's sitting on the tracks. And then Vic comes in. He's got a, a leg brace on. I don't know where that came from 'cause I don't remember it from
I think he had it. I think he did have it earlier from the canister. He put it on after he got pulled out of the canister thing, I
Oh, that makes sense. Okay. So Andy's got his gun and he yells, "Vic," and then runs over to the other virals and pretends to be d- wall eating. And so Vic just walks over and starts clubbing them on the back of the head, each one down the line. And then when he gets to Andy, Andy just turns around and shoots him.
But it's not a fatal shot, and they… There's a scuffle that ensues. And they start fighting, and then the gun falls away, and then Vic tries to get to the gun, and then Andy goes over there, and there's some more struggles, and the gun goes off. And from inside the vehicle, you have Rosie and Toomy looking out the window, and Vic get up.
Right
And so Vic gets up and walks over to the truck, and he yells at them to get out, and he grabs Toomy and pulls her out, so she falls and hits her head on one of the rails, knocking her out Turns out Andy might be wounded, but he's not down and out. He gets up and he limps back towards Vic, and Vic just starts with his typical evil crap.
He's like, you took one of mine, so I'm gonna kill her." And he's sitting there with the baby, and Andy's like, "Don't. Do- if you do it, really bad things. We're both done. We're over. We're dying." And he just takes her from him,
Just plucks him out of her hands, goes over and gets Toomey up and out of the tunnel, and just leaves Vic there to lie there and bleed to death against the tunnel wall
Yeah. It gets what he deserves
Yeah. Yeah. So they're walking back across the fields, and he's trying to get Toomey to walk because she's got a serious concussion.
Yeah
And he gets her to keep going by asking her more of translating for her language. So daddy is vapi, and friend is mita, and he asks her what guba means, and she's like, "White man."
And he's like, "Oh, I'm definitely that." So they keep heading for the smoke, and he's getting worse. It's absolutely amazing that he's made it this far
Stephen: All willpower
Rhys: and that disease. And of all honesty, I don't know they could have picked a better actor because at no point in time was I like, "There's no way he's doing that." I'm like, "You know what?
If anybody could,
I'm, thinking Martin." Yeah.
He's got that every man that you root for, you can see yourself in
Yes. Yes. He's got the honey forming around his eyes, and he spies these entrails from a gutted animal, and he crawls over towards it. And he looks at Toomey, and he comes up with this plan. Now, they're continuing to move forward through the scrub. There's several zombies coming, but Toomey and the baby have to stay close to him 'cause they won't target them 'cause they can smell him instead.
But Toomey's "I've gotta stay close 'cause the face paint's washing off, and now I'm not invisible to them anymore." You have, like a half mile away, you have the clever man with a bunch of the other people from the community, and he's clapping the sticks together, drawing them all in, and they're all killing them. And back half mile out, Andy collapses, and he's like, "This is it, and here's what's gonna happen." And he takes out the entrails and the stick, and he's like, "Treat this just like mom's spaghetti." And the fact that he quotes Willie does not go unnoticed by Toomey. Toomey looks at him, and her eyes get big like he's become a father figure to her.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: And now he enacts his plan, which is probably the best plan for dealing with zombies I've seen since Michonne in "The Walking Dead."
Yes
She took off their jaws and their hands, perfect pack animals, right?
L- let him around by chain
Yeah. So he's there, and he has Toomey and the baby, and he is completely glazed over with the honey, and they've got the entrails on a stick in front of him, and he is just going forward, chasing after that un- till they walk into the clearing where all of the community has been killing all of the virals.
And they're actually done for the day. They're gonna head back, but she does her little bird call, and her mom hears it and turns, and they come back amazed at the fact that this girl is riding on the back of a zombie,
A white man.
a white zombie who has a baby strapped to his back.
Yeah.
Like they're all thrilled.
They pull the baby out, and the clever man, he gets ready to kill him, and she stops him. And she takes out her-- his wife's perfume and sprays a few s- puffs that he seems to like stop and sniff 'cause she knows that reminds him of his wife. And then when he's in that head space, then they do the deed and kill him
Yeah, which was nice of her, but then you also got the argument how much still remains? Is there a way to reverse it or anything,
wow. Yeah, you get in that whole mess like cooties, right?
Exactly
kids and now we've figured out a way to fix it.
Right.
But I like what she did, and the reason they put it in there was to get him as much not pleasure, but get him, yeah, closure, yeah, a- as they could. G- calm him down, remind him of good times,
yeah. So we have this closing shot where the, where you have an aerial shot over top, and there's this shot of Wilpena Pound, which is in the heart of the Flinders Ranges. I just thought this was so cool. It's this enormous crescent-shaped amphitheater and it was formed over the discourse of millions of years worth of erosion, so there's a wall of peaks that goes all the way around the pond, which is about 17 kilometers long.
It's actually a very famous landmark out there. But it was just, it's just such a cool-looking thing. And all these guys go back to the community, and everyone seems happy. There's music, and there's food, and everybody's just like everyday life kind
They're celebrating still being alive
Yes. And they take the baby out, and everyone's thrilled that Toomie's back, and hey, there's this baby, and they pull up her shirt, and written across her belly it says, "Thank you." So they take his body, and honoring it like they do with theirs, they put his body up in a tree so the ghosts can't get to him. And that is the end of Cargo
Yeah, it was a good movie. I will say I, I wanna give a shout-out earlier at the beginning to the, the flies. They were well-trained flies because you heard 'em and they showed up right at the right times, and they were buzzing around at the right point. Some good well-trained flies were in this one, wherever the fly wrangler was.
It's really funny to me. It-- there's no way to do it, and it's a good thing 'cause it would just suck up all my time. But apparently Martin Freeman, every time they do a take, strives to do every take differently from the last one. And so I would be really interested the, like with the flies, like how many takes they had to do to get the flies just perfect, and how different each one of his performances were.
It could be a completely different story if you look at all these different takes and how he does them
You could edit the movie and give it a total- totally different feel from something. Yeah
The editors and the directors, s- in the case of this film, did a great job of pulling out the right scenes. But it always makes me wonder wow, how did that look differently when he did it for the other three takes he had to do that scene?
that's even better than blooper reels.
Yes. You're right.
Freeman w- reels.
There you go.
Yeah, exactly
all right, so there's Cargo. We don't, we haven't done a whole lot of zombies, but this is a, a good one to go check out if you're i- if all you've seen is the crazies or something with the, the wild attacking aggressive zombies.
This is, back more of the Night of the Living Dead type zombie
Yeah, and it's a lot more along the lines of The Battery, where the story isn't the zombies, it's the people. And it's not even necessarily the people against the zombies, it's just the people against the situation
Yeah. And I'll give credit to Walking Dead for bringing that about, more the comic book than the show afterwards. But, that was a shift, a focus on different. We had gone from the Night of Living Dead, slow zombies threatening the world, to really fast zombies so it could be a good action movie on top of horror, to let's focus on people and story, and the zombie is just the s- the setting it's in.
You get, when you get stuff like that Star Trek and a lot of TV shows do that a lot. You get some of the same plot lines on many of those shows, but in that different setting, and it's because it's a s- a people focused or something like that story
Oh yeah. You go back to Hill Street Blues was not about the crime on the streets of Chicago or New York or wherever it was set. It was about the interactions between the cops on the beat and in the department. So that, it's just so much more, that's just the environment they're in because people are more than just their job
Yeah, Stargate and Castle. I watch both of those shows for the things that aren't the plot of the week. The characters and their interactions and their lives rather than I, h- I can't tell you half of the things investigated in Castle, but I can quote all the little things he says in between and all that,
ja, ja
All right, what's next?
Next is film number nine, and we're going back to when we were in high school, Near Dark from 1987, directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Ooh they let women direct movies back then? That's pretty
Not very often
Yeah. So all right, that'll be coming up next.
Awesome
And everybody, if you loved it, I hope you stayed with us. Hi Mike, how you doing? Go give us a like, give us thumbs up review, whatever, some stars, we'd appreciate it. So all right everybody, see you next time
See you, Steve
