Contagion (2011) Review
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Some movies can warn us of a dark future. When they come true, it feels more like a documentary once it’s over.
PLOT
2011’s Contagion follows an intense series of events involving a fictional pandemic dubbed MEV-1 or Meningoencephalitis-Virus 1. Global operations manager of the mining/manifacturing corporation AIMM Anderson, Beth Emhoff, is in the midst of returning from a Hong Kong business trip and gets sick around the time she has an affair with an ex lover during a layover in Chicago. By the time she returns home to Minneapolis, she dies of a seizure where the virus is unknown to the public. Her husband Mitch is naturally immune, but her six year old son Clark (Griffin Kane) would succumb to it within the same two day span she returned home. The only family Mitch has left to quarantine with at home is his teenage daughter Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron). At Atlanta’s Department of Homeland Security, Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) addresses with other representatives the possibility of a bioweapon being released. Epidemic Intelligence Officer (EIS) officer Erin Mears is sent to contact everyone who’s contacted Beth before she died and also negotiate with bureaucrats in committing resources for a public health response. She wouldn’t get to live it to see a result due to dying of the same infection. As she gets buried in a mass grave, the virus spreads to the point of citywide quarantine where many civilians would panic via looting and be violent to one another. Through her research, Doctor Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) is able to determine the virus to have a mix of pig and bat-borne DNA. With Cheever deeming it too virulent to be researched at Biosafety Level 3 labs, it remains restricted to work at level 4 only. In turn, Hextall orders Ian Sussman (Elliot Gould) to destroy his samples for not meeting the new safety standards, but he chooses to work behind her back hoping to achieve a vaccine sooner. As the vaccine gets developed, scientists determine MEV-1 to be spread by formites & respiratory droplets that’ll project a 25-30% mortality rate once 1 in 12 people will be infected. In Hong Kong, WHO epidemiologist Leonora Orantes would go through cctv footage to confirm Beth was the index case. Government official Sun Feng (Chin Han) would hold her hostage for months until guarantee of his village to obtain first vaccines. She would be let go when WHO officials give them placebos, but she would return to the village to let Feng know the truth. During this outbreak, conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede claims to have been cured of MEV-1 via forsythia, which causes many to overwhelm pharmacies for it. He would be arrested for securities fraud, but his fan base bails him out. The vaccine is eventually proven successful when Hextall doesn’t contract the virus upon visiting her infected father. The CDC would then award it to the public by lottery based on birth-dates. The likes of Cheever and Rear Admiral Lyle Haggerty (Bryan Cranston) would be the earliest of people to obtain vaccines. The former would go through ethical fallout when previously tipping off his wife Aubrey (Sanaa Lathan) to get out of town when the outbreak first began, which she shared the warning to a friend and in turn caused the original public panic. Aubrey is still given her vaccine, but Cheever chooses to give his to Anthony (Joshua Seiden), son of a janitor named Roger (John Hawkes) who is an acquaintance to him and overheard him wanting Aubrey. By the time the world slowly resumes to normal and public venues become used to retrieve vaccine bracelets, the death toll of MEV-1 had surpassed 26 million worldwide. Once getting their vaccines & bracelets, Mitch gives Jory an at home prom night for her to celebrate with her boyfriend Andrew (Brian J O’Donnell) after days of social distancing. As he gives his daughter a joyful moment, he still grieves over the loss of his wife. The film ends with a flashback revealing the true result of the MEV-1 spillover event in China. A bulldozer from AIMM Anderson disturbed a bat colony. One of those bats would shelter into a pig farm, but its remaining banana gets eaten by one of the pigs. That same pig is picked to be slaughtered at the same casino Beth went to and the chef that prepared it did not wash his hands when shaking her hand, officially transmitting the virus to her that day.
THOUGHTS
If we’re talking about some crazy irony and coincidences, the first time I watched this movie was the day before COVID-19 was announced to be a global problem for us. I chose to watch it at that specific time because I couldn’t help trying being optimistic that this would blow over fast and boy was I wrong. The fact many people would follow suit watching this during said pandemic does say a lot that when we’re at our lowest, it’s a bear we want to poke. Contagion is not the first of its kind if you remember others like 1995’s Outbreak, but the former just hits different because it gets taken to the next level in making us aware how epidemics spread. Writer Scott Z Burns bases this narrative off of actual previous pandemics such as swine flu and SARS which are just great examples on how you just got to prepare for the worst. You can still identify this whole thing as a thriller but because it’s getting older and so much has happened to our world, it feels more in line to horror so intelligently. Every second that passes is frightening because it shows you can get sick when you’re not being careful enough. I don’t want to come off like a PSA but if you’re not taking care of yourself and eliminate germs the way you were raised to, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. This isn’t even a found footage style movie like Rec, but the way Stephen Mirrione’s editing and Peter Andrews’ cinematography is put together, it all just felt as real as a documentary. Just seeing one person at a time getting sick in waves before the inevitable vaccines save us from a damnation of an apocalypse was scary to see because it all felt like you could be next. I mean I had Covid for a period and while I didn’t have it as bad as everyone else in the beginning of said outbreak, I understood how terrified it is to be isolated from the world and need to wait out the recovery in order for it to pay off. I think this movie is so watchable the first time and so on is because at the hands of director Steven Soderbergh, he teaches how fear & misinformation is as deadly as a pathogen. When you follow the whole ensemble, you don’t just understand the groups they’re representing but also accept anyone can be infected and no one is really safe from an epidemic no matter how hard you try. Gwyneth Paltrow was patient zero as Beth and while it’s one thing to be disappointed she’d cheat on her husband mid working trip, you still have some sympathy for her as she dies as she never intended any of what came after to happen. Her seizure scene is so appropriately unsettling because that’s how unpredictable it can be to lose a loved one like so. Matt Damon is the everyday man here as Mitch because as he’s the unsung hero being the first immune, he’s just trying to keep together what’s left of his family by having his daughter respect the necessity of social distancing and he has to live with the fact the last thing his wife was cheat on him. The way he was in denial of her death after seeing her seizure is great acting on Damon’s end as well because grief is unpredictable in how it’s transacted. It is also sad that he couldn’t save his step son from something that started out unexplainable, but the fact he and his daughter are still standing post vaccine does establish it wasn’t all for nothing and they can live in their honor. One aspect that isn’t talked about enough is Marion Cotillard who’s amazing as Leonora because she’s got the natural compassion in wanting to save the world and knows everyone deserves a chance to fight for their lives. That is why she returns to the village because no one should be ripped away from that opportunity. If I worked for WHO and found out they were giving out placebos like that, I’d quit and I hope she does too because in front o her, they undid everything they were supposed to stand for. Kate Winslet is another example as Mears because she’s putting herself out there to make sure everyone is on the same page with the most appropriate idealism she can pass on. It was sad for her to die of infection too when she too thought she was as careful, but I nearly cried that the last thing she did was giving her coat to someone else begging for warmth. That just said a lot on how selfless she was. In other case, you can say the same applies for Laurence Fishburne as Cheever because he’s acting the most level headed in his position having to balance the right decisions that can save us and still try to think of how it affects him. I really don’t believe anyone that claims they wouldn’t give their families an advantage of any kind if you’re in his shoes. Whatever repercussions he goes through after, it was worth it. The only one that I straight up dislike which was the point was Jude Law, who was visibly selfish as Alan. The guy was making a sucker out of everyone with forsythia and it worked out so well that he avoided jail time. If you’re taking advantage of people during such trying times, you’re a monster and that can’t be sugarcoated one bit. With that being said, seeing the chain reaction of how the infection got to Beth is enough proof of backing to always wash your hands because you don’t always know what kind of germs you got on you until you take care of yourself. In conclusion, Contagion is now one of the most important movies ever made due to it predicting a rough future while still educating us the importance of handling every germ possible. If epidemics interest you, watch this now.
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