Contagion 3.0****

This movie is one of the more chilling doomsday thrillers you will see. It ranks right up there with Outbreak, The Day After and Fail Safe. It is presented as if it was a documentary although it really is a fictional story. But one so believable, so plausible that it slowly creeps up on you and by the time it’s over, you’re shaken but more so you’re scared because you KNOW it could happen, A horror story without the usual horror story trappings. In 1918 there really was a worldwide epidemic that killed millions. And, according to experts it could easily, VERY easily happen again!

It is also an educational movie. The viewer learns how a virus begins and how it spreads. How society reacts to a pandemic. How the human condition reacts to the pandemic. The movie points out something as simple as bat droppings getting mixed in with food that pigs eat and then the pigs being handled and its meat being consumed by people could lead to a new mutated virulent virus. The virus can spread quickly from human to human because it is airborne (sneezing, coughing, kissing, etc) and left behind or transmitted by touch (touching other people, shaking hands, touching things that are later touched by other people). In other words, one of the most communicable and, therefore, most deadly type viruses.

The film begins with the mysterious and fairly sudden sickness and death of Beth Emhoff, superbly played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Her death foretells terrible events to come and we see what happened to her in flashbacks. Those events are what transpires when a new and extremely virulent virus appears in the world, beginning in Asia and rapidly spreading throughout the world. What is depicted in the wake of this horrible outbreak is an epidemic as bad, or worse, that that Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918. Paltrow's husband is played, in an equally fine performance, by Matt Damon, a plain, ordinary man caught up in incredible and devastating events that suddenly kill his beloved wife and step-son. Damon's daughter is virtually imprisoned in the house with her father for the duration of the outbreak as he is terrified that it will infect her although he, himself, is immune.


Most of the rest of the "name" cast, comprise the "good guys" who are working on a way to save the world as civilization crumbles beneath their feet. They are Laurence Fishburne , Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet and Elliott Gould as the doctors and investigators working on the virus.. They provide intellect and stability and through them we see some of the scientific process involved in fighting modern diseases.

Clark