Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
One shift at airport security turns into a life-or-death negotiation in Carry-On, Jaume Collet-Serra's 2024 Christmas Eve thriller.
What is Carry On about?
A young TSA officer working the overnight checkpoint expects nothing more than a long, uneventful holiday shift until a calm, unseen voice starts speaking directly into his earpiece. The stranger has a very specific demand: let one dangerous, unidentified item pass through his lane and onto a departing flight, no questions asked. Refusing puts someone he loves in immediate danger, while complying could put an entire plane full of strangers at risk. With the terminal filling up around him and every choice narrowing his options further, he has to outthink an opponent who always seems to be one step ahead, all while keeping his composure in front of the very travelers he is sworn to protect.
Cast & crew
Taron Egerton carries the film as the officer forced into an impossible bargain, opposite Jason Bateman as the voice guiding him through it with unnerving patience. Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler, Dean Norris, Sinqua Walls, Logan Marshall-Green, and Theo Rossi fill out a supporting cast that keeps the pressure rising from multiple directions at once.
Context & significance
Collet-Serra, a director well versed in confined, high-tension setpieces, uses the airport's crowded, procedural environment as its own kind of trap, turning ordinary security-line routines into a ticking-clock thriller. At 119 minutes, the film leans on real-time urgency and tight geography rather than sprawling action, keeping the cat-and-mouse dynamic between the two leads at its center throughout. The holiday setting adds an extra layer of pressure, contrasting the festive crowds moving through the terminal with the quiet, escalating threat playing out just beneath the surface of an otherwise routine night shift.
Where & how to watch
Carry-On is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login, offered with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles through an interface built entirely around Farsi-speaking viewers wherever they are in the world.