Cargo

A virus has devastated most of Australia. Andy (Freeman) and Kay (Porter) live on a houseboat on a river with their one-year-old daughter Rosie, barely surviving on what food they can scavenge. Nearby, a young Aboriginal girl, Thoomi (Landers), keeps watch over an infected man - caring for him but keeping her distance for her own safety. With sudden tragedy, their paths will cross, and they will be forced to survive together in a dangerous and hostile country - and one of them is already infected...

This is an assured, intense horror film, both the horrors without (as the infected hover around our leads), and within (as people start to turn on one another with casual cruelty). There's a sure sense of Aboriginal spirituality from writer/director Ramke and her co-director Howling, combined with a vividly created broken-down post-apocalyptic world. Freeman, being the biggest name, dominates in a role that's very much unlike his usual work - still with the essential decency of his other characters, from Tim from "The Office" to his Watson in "Sherlock", but with greater depth, pain and eventual heroism. And a strong Australian supporting cast give this a great deal of gravity and reality. There's some cleverly layered themes of family, of the legacies of black and white Australia, and of what we carry within us and what we leave behind. Scary, relevant and heartfelt.