Movie Review: 'Contagion'

“Contagion”
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Sanaa Lathan, Jennifer Ehle, Demetri Martin, Elliott Gould

The pandemic scenario is a nice, creepy sub-genre of horror films. “The Last Man on Earth,” “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Crazies”  are good examples, but - up until now - “Outbreak” was at the top of the list.

Director Steven Soderbergh has managed to outdo that flick with his very unsettling new movie “Contagion.”

It induces a bit of paranoia, and after you see it, you likely will think twice about shaking hands with anyone. You'll also start loading up on anti-bacterial soaps and surgical face masks.

Soderbergh is an interesting director; his body of work is varied and unique. It includes “King of the Hill” (not the animated TV show), the Elmore Leonard penned “Out of Sight,” “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “Traffic” and the “Ocean's” (Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen) series. He's also produced, written, edited and acted in a number of films. He is a true auteur.

With “Contagion,” he changes gears again and manages to make what will become a classic horror film. This year has been good to horror movie fans.

The thing that scared me the most in “Contagion” was its plausibility. Pandemics have happened more than a few times, including the plague of Athens in 430 BC, the Black Death in the 14th century that killed an estimated 75 million people and the Third Pandemic that struck in the 1800s. Then there's the bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, typhus, leprosy, malaria, yellow fever, etc. And we're now living in the age of AIDS/HIV and hepatitis c.
Viral contagions scare the heck out of me. They're tiny little things that can creep up and kill you.

Soderbergh is obviously as paranoid as any of us, and he manages to effectively channel that fear into this film.

It starts on “Day Two” - there are screen graphics throughout letting the viewer know the time frame.

Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a go-getter executive returning from a business meeting in Hong Kong. We get some early shots that become more meaningful as the film progresses, but Soderbergh lets us know that something's wrong from the very start. After seeing these scenes and the outcome, you might never eat communal peanuts in a bar again and might even be afraid of using your credit card.  

When Beth gets home to her husband and son in Minneapolis, things get bad. She has cold sweats, she vomits and she foams at the mouth. At first, she thinks it might be food poisoning, but it's much worse than that.

She goes to the hospital where she's examined - in great detail. The doctors have no clue what is happening to her or why. Things then get even weirder. More people are getting these same symptoms at a rapid rate and the Centers for Disease Control, with a team of doctors, starts looking into the situation with earnest. No one can figure out what the contagion is or where it came from.
But it's obvious that it's easy to catch.

Some people - Beth's husband for one - are immune. Again, the experts can't figure out why. Nobody knows what they are dealing with.
 
Beth's son is not as lucky as his dad. He begins showing symptoms.

A subplot involves a widely read blogger (Jude Law), who finds a way to profit off of what he claims to be a cure. Soderbergh is pointing out the now-common “I read it on the Internet so it must be true” mindset.

The final scene is “Day One,” and we see how this whole thing started. It's chilling.

Considering things like the Ebola virus seemed to come out of nowhere, the story is all the more believable and terrifying.

There are a lot of subtle implications in “Contagion,” and it's a scary piece of work. Soderbergh at the helm is a big plus - as is the all-star cast.

If you don't mind being scared by something that could easily happen, you'll love the movie.

Just be careful not to touch anything in the theater or shake hands with anyone. You might catch something.[[In-content Ad]]