SHUT-IN MOVIE #12- CONTAGION (2011)

Today was a Netflix movie day. It's hard to find films I want to watch on Netflix, they don't seem to have a lot to choose from, which I realise isn't the case, but I find navigating through it very tedious and unenjoyable. I tried watching the following but quickly gave up on. #1. STRIPES #2. CODE 8 #3. TIME TRAP That's when I saw CONTAGION and thought, I'd give it another go. I'd watched it when it was first released in 2011 and had enjoyed it to a degree but felt it was a little bit meh. The trailer had made it look like a rollicking and tense drama, which it most certainly wasn't. It's only now, through the filter of Covid 19 that you realise that Steven Soderbergh is a soothe sayer and this film is a premonition of things to come...

It feels like a docu-drama and follows the birth of a virus as it sweeps the world, from China carried by patient Zero, Paltrow back to the US and her loving husband Matt Damon. From then it's all very terrifying and since the virus is far more deadly than Covid the death count is huge. There's an impressive sense of building dread and pandemonium and watching the large cast, which includes Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Bryan Cranston trying to save the world, is very gripping. This is like one of the classic 1970s disaster movies but filtered through 21st Century sensibilities. The only thing Soderbergh fails to predict is blond, mentally deficient clown President ranting and spluttering incoherent bollox about injecting bleach and rude reporters, which only goes to show that Soderbergh knew having a comedy relief character would have blown the drama. Perhaps not the best film to watch in the present climate but I gotta say I enjoyed it. 8/10