A Mini-Review of Contagion

 

I watched Contagion this weekend with Husband. Duh, I loved it. It wasn’t a hype machine for crazy-pants pseudo -science or mutants or zombies. It was crazy-pants really, real.

Unlike most of the post-apocalyptic stories we see in entertainment, there was an unsettling realism to Contagion. The fear that was so easily fueled and exploited just made sense. There are enough people in the world with enough mistrust to easily create chaos unrelated to the  direct source of danger.

The movie followed a number of people in different places as far as the virus’ path, place in society, and ability actually do something for themselves or others.

It was interesting (and disturbing) seeing the little things break people down faster then the actual virus. The idea that the dead were only about 1%, give or take, of the population (maybe, as they only alluded to it), was scary.  Society just fell apart.  That’s one (maybe two) out of every one hundred people…

I might sound insensitive but, I honestly didn’t think I’d notice. The thing isn’t how long it would take us to notice though, it’s how long it would take the government to respond. Once they start hiding the President and organizing the national guard people start too panic.

We only know what we see on the news and we assume the government knows so much more than we do. We assume they know about science, suspects, cures, and have more than enough food for almost everyone. We assume they, like we would, well take care of their family and friends first and everyone else will have to prove themselves. When we take a good, hard look at ourselves we’ll realize that we probably don’t have the whatever-it-is that someone’s looking for when they decide to save a life at the expense of long term planning for people they actually give a shit about.

Contagion was more about the infectious nature of rhetoric and rumors than the damage done by actual the virus itself.

I say it’s definitely worth the watch but maybe not worth the money to see it in a theater.