Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Contagion’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

If there’s one particular constant about our world that mankind often forgets, since we’ve done such a fine job of evolving into the dominant species on this planet, is that nature is ready and willing to assert her dominance whenever she so chooses and throughout history Planet Earth has flexed its proverbial muscles over mankind by taking us down a peg or two by way of viruses and bacteria that weaken all of humanity. The Spanish Flu in 1918 is perhaps the most recent example of that, but even though nature is able to humble us with its microscopic weapons, we’ve still found ways to endure and grow.
 
But make no mistake about it. There is going to come a day when some kind of virus or bacteria figures out how to overcome our science and our medicine and bring forth a pandemic that will rock the foundations of humanity and change the course of mankind for generations. Yet, while we all hope that never happens in our lifetime, one has to wonder what would happen if such a pandemic were to strike modern society now. Would we band together and give scientists everything they need to wipe this scourge out? Or would we give into fear and let chaos reign as the virus ran free amongst the population? Thankfully, film is always there to explore such matters and a modern pandemic just so happened to be the subject of the ultra-frightening movie, Contagion.
 
Now in this particular film, we are introduced to several people who all met in a Casino in China and well, something terrible happened while they all shared space in said Casino. Because this small group of people, managed to contract a new type of virus, one that works quickly to grow in the human body and one that unfortunately, kills its host. And to make matters worse, this particular virus lives for quite some time outside of the body, and after this small group of infected people return home and die, this new virus begins to spread amongst the population at an alarming rate and it will be up to every scientist available to find a way to kill this intruder before mankind and modern society are crippled by its power.  

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​Truth be told, when I first heard about this film, I kind of rolled my eyes, treating it as though it was nothing more than a knock off of Outbreak. But when I was finally able to see it, holy cow was I forced to eat a little crow because this movie is a tour de force of terror, one that truly does give us quite a realistic feel to a modern pandemic since we are treated to haunting visuals in this one, such as people fighting over food, and modern services breaking down and it is just eerie and horrifying to see the streets of major American cities as vacant as can be as people hide inside their homes as they hope to avoid catching this lethal virus.
 
But the film does feature other elements outside of sheer terror because watching the good people of the Centers for Disease Control work together with other agencies to put a stop this nightmare is downright fascinating and the movie gets serious props for educating people on how viruses spread by working those facts into the movie’s dialogue in smooth and simple fashion and I also appreciated the fact that the story split its storytelling style to give us a view from the everyday world by way of the characters who aren’t scientists and are just trying to survive this horrific pandemic and bide their time until science cures the world of this scourge at last.
 
If anything, this is actually quite an intense motion picture, simply because the virus spreads so fast in this film and you can feel the danger growing behind the scenes as the modern world comes to a screeching halt and it really is scary to watch states close their borders in this film and see society give in to panic because you hope we’re better than that. But our survival instinct is a powerful thing, but so is the planet’s and that’s perhaps the best part of this film, the fact that it points out that we need to figure out how to live in harmony with this world and quit trying to show it who the boss is, or we will unleash quite the unpleasant surprise…

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