Review: Contagion

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Stars: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law

Release Date: 9 September 2011

Genres: Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Memorable quote:
Alan Krumwiede: It's a bad day to be a rhesus monkey.

What?

Let’s imagine that someone gets the flu, he has all the regular symptoms, meaning he has a fever, headache, running nose and joint pain. Then you go to a doctor and you get a shot or some pills, you lie in your bed and you get all better. But, what happens if some chicken has sex with a pig , so you get some crazy sophisticated super bacteria which then starts to infect people and all this leads to hysteria. People will walk with masks, won’t touch anything and wash their hands ten times, a day, and after a while everything will calm down because we found a cure. At least this is what we are used to, now imagine that this super bacteria, is so strong that it kills a person just by touching him, and that there is no cure, what would you do. Well this movie brings you exactly that scenario . The regular all day plague that just is fucked up on steroids!

Yes?

As I said it before, I liked this movie, because the evil side here is something that actually exists. Not some crazy psycho killer or alien. Its some bacteria that decided to show his teeth. The truth factor or reality factor is so amazing that you could actually start to imagine yourself undergoing the same thing, considering it’s so close. They just showed us how our whole society can collapse since we just can’t control this disease, even though we believe that we are fully protected against such a catastrophe.

Another great thing here is the medical explanation to everything. Everything was explained in such a way that the viewer actually believes what they all say, it sounds convincing and true. They showed and explained us the structure of the bacteria, contagion factors and other difficult terminology that has to do with our problem, which again gives a lot of credibility to this problem.

Jude law and Matt Damon gave a good believable performance. The other actors kind of faded in the background.

I also loved the fact that this movie has claws, not everything stays pink, and the good guys don’t always win. You are infected you die end of story. This counts also for small children, nobody is safe be prepared!

No?

Of course this movie brings us the usual disaster kind pictures. Including, the President talks to the people, a family stuck in traffic who is trying to escape, shots of garbage on the streets and people who just kill other people to steel or to survive. Sadly those moments bring us nothing new and those are the boring parts in the movie.

Well…

Overall I liked it, it scared the shit out of me, on the way out of the movie I didn’t want to touch nobody and anything, when I came home I washed my hands. The reality is that this could happen and this makes this movie in my eyes really interesting to watch. Because of all the above I grade this…

Grade: 8 out of 10

Mammoth