Contagion Movie Review: Smart, Realistic And Entertaining

Contagion is getting a lot of love from critics, and rightfully so – it’s brilliant. Hands down one of the best films of the year, this thriller is more of an unintentional horror film than anything else. It will having you leaving the theater paranoid about everything you eat and touch.

Contagion takes audiences on the journey of a lethal airborne virus that is wiping out everything it comes into contact with – within days. As the virus spreads and the medical community tries to find a cure, the rest of society starts to fall apart at the seams trying to save themselves from being the next victim.

What really makes this film so scary is that it’s not that far-fetched. It’s a very realistic look at what could happen if we encountered a virus that we didn’t know how to fight. Most of us aren’t that aware of how many things we touch throughout the day, but after seeing this film, you’ll be stocking up on hand sanitizer to carry with you everywhere you go.

Contagion has a stellar cast including Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet. With such a large and talented cast, one might assume that it’s easy to get confused between the different story lines, but that’s not the case. You feel an emotional attachment to nearly all the characters while drawing a comparison to so many of the zombie stories that have been out as of late. All of our characters trying to stay away from the infected… or fight to stay alive once they become infected.

My only real bones to pick with this film is that smarty pants blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) clearly didn’t know how to multiply by 2, and while I’m being picky – “R naught” should have been R subscript 0. Small things to pick on, but overall it’s solid, smart and without question one of the best films of the year.

Grade: A-
Review By: Emma Loggins

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  1. I like how this movie portrayed the blogger as the villain, evangelizing to his online audience the benefits of a drug he owns stock in. Was this an attempt by old media to demonize bloggers as profiteering liars? I think it was! In Orson Welles’s voice from Citizen Kane, “don’t believe everything you read on the Internet son. Buy a newspaper!”