So What's the Deal With 'Carriers'?

This morning at 10:20 I headed out to a nearby AMC megaplex to see a film called Carriers. For reasons best left to the experts (like this one and this one) to explain, the film had been sitting on a shelf at Paramount Vantage for well over a year. One can only assume that contractual obligations are what compelled Paramount to dump the film into theaters in the first place, and the grand total screen count? 96. (You can see a full listing of the markets graced by Carriers' presence right here at Filmjerk.)

So this is hardly news, right? A "boutique" subsidiary gets absorbed (pretty much in full) by its parent company, and then voila ... you've got a handful of "indie-style" studio products that get little to no love from the distributor, the marketing departments, the press, or the movie-going public. Of course there's nothing shameful about a hundred-screen release, and it's not like Carriers is "mainstream" horror in any way, but why'd the studio refuse to release the flick in Los Angeles and New York? Because it's crap?

Nope, it's actually pretty good, truth be told. (I liked it, anyway. Here's my review at FEARnet.) It might have been even better had the film not been re-submitted to the MPAA for the apparently sacred PG-13 rating ... but what does the rating matter when the film cannot be found anywhere? Anyway, I'd love to hear some feedback from anyone who checks the film out this weekend. The rest of us can chat once Carriers hits DVD ... almost assuredly before the end of the year.