Contagion review

Steven Soderbergh is an interesting director. He was at the forefront of the late-80s to early-90s “Indie” film movement alongside Gus Van Sant, Quentin Tarantino, and Danny Boyle (all of whom have now found great mainstream success). Soderbergh is probably most well known for the Oceans 11 movies, but he seems to branch out in a lot of different directions, genre-wise. So, now he tries his hand at making a high-concept horror/thriller film, and he makes it absolutely captivating.

In Contagion, a family is shocked when mom suddenly gets a horrible flu-like sickness, eventually killing her and infecting numerous other people. Because of her recent business trip, the disease becomes a worldwide epidemic, spreading like wildfire. Numerous government agents, a journalist, CDC workers, a WHO officer, and numerous ground-level civilians all fight different levels of fear when anybody could be infected.

Virus movies sometimes don’t make any sense at all, but here Soderbergh is able to make it feel all too real. The real-world implications are very much explored in detail, and all of his characters are unique players in the global scale of the epidemic. Every facet of the film is meticulous in detail- the locations, the dialogue, and even the symptoms of the virus. Yet the film never feels manufactured and the dialogue isn’t rushed or overly-wordy. It’s exactly what this subgenre of film needed- something to make it both legitimate and engaging.

The best part of the movie is that it is actually frightening. The global scale on which the film operates keeps the stakes high, and the virus itself is utterly diabolical. The actors push the film into genre classic- high profile stars like Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Lawrence Fishburne show off their skills, and the script is pretty damn good, too. I’d say the thing that really jumped out at me, however, is the score, which reminded me of early John Carpenter or Brad Fiedel’s electro-synth scores. It admittedly gives it an almost nostalgic feel, like the movie was made back in 1983. It doesn’t feel cheesy, though, because of how great the rest of the movie is. It’s kind of classy, actually.

I will say there is a flaw in this otherwise great movie- two very important characters, played by Jude Law and Marion Cotillard, seem to be afterthoughts in the film’s final moments. I won’t give too much away, but at about the halfway point in the movie, Cotillard’s character is absent even though she has a major subplot in the film. She doesn’t show up until the end of the film, and her subplot is only partially resolved. Jude Law’s character as well seems to have his subplot abandoned in spite of being one of the more interesting the film has to offer. I’d say the fractured, country-jumping narrative might not be to everyone’s liking, but I personally found it engaging.

I’d highly recommend this film to anyone who wants a movie that gets under their skin without being totally gross, and wants an engaging and entertaining thriller.