Entertainment Grade: B to B+
Wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you sneeze. Never eat off the table. Never drink after somebody else. These are health precautions that, through life, we continually disregard. Contagion shows us just how deadly not taking these measures can be.
Contagion is an epidemic thriller about the spread of a highly contagious virus that has an extremely high mortality rate. The situation is made even more dire when the virus mutates faster than a vaccine can be made. The movie is set from the view of several different protagonists throughout the story, from a CDC scientist to a father and his daughter as they work through the introduction of the disease, the spread, and the social panic and anarchy that travels in its wake.
This movie sports several well-known actors and actresses such as Laurence Fishbourne who plays a CDC doctor, Matt Damon who plays an average father who happens to be immune to the disease and works to protect his daughter who is not, and Jude Law, a conspiracy theorist that spreads distrust of the government and gathers a huge following.
The movie itself was good in the fact that it hit its mark and got the feel that it was going for. As the movie progresses and the civilized part of humanity is torn down by the desperation of those who would do anything to survive, you can see what people might and could do to each other for their own sakes.
Another way the movie is the contrasting way that it portrays a government who is doing everything it can to help the common people, but also makes one question–what lengths they would go to do accomplish a goal. Contagion keeps up a consistent sense of tension from the start of the film that keeps you immersed in the movie to the bitter end.
Now for the bad parts. Contagion does put up a continual tension that keeps one interested…at least up to a point. As the movie progresses, you find yourself wishing for a break in the suspense; some down time in the movie to take in what has happened so far. The movie also, while doing its best to explain itself, uses many medical terms that many people will not understand.
Contagion does a great job as a thriller that is accentuated by the actors’ performances. Even with its faults, the movie provides a good show that does what many movies of today fail to do; it actually gets the feel the producers intended.
