Review of Contagion (2011) by Ajsp — 15 Sep 2011

This movie had great potential. It had a great lineup of cast members, and the doomsday senario is definately appealing to those who enjoy watching apocolyptic style movies. However this film failed to deliver the excitement that it portrayed in its previews. Overall the movie is downright boring to watch as it jumps around, and does not adiquately portray the level of emotion, panic, crime, and civil unrest that one would expect if the world was on the verge of a major collapse by a virus that originally had no treatment, no vaccine, was easily spread by airborne and fluid transmition, and had a high casualty rate. The movie tended to jump around to various characters, and required the viewers immagination to come up with conclusions of how most of characters would end up at the end of the movie. Despite the cast, the acting was poor and most of the cast did not show much emotion. There were very few parts with action as most would expect fights with the military, civil disobedience, mass rioting, looting, and increased gang activity poping up. Most movies of this type have shown numerous sights of mass graves, body collection, and even bodies dead on the streets. You see fighting with government officials/ military personel, rioting, mass looting, and overall increased crime. The potential seriousness of the situation was never really brought out as it jumped around too much to other characters and did not give any character enough time to really develop a solid story line. Parts that seemed to intensify quickly went away and were forgoten about. An example would be when Mitch Emhoff (played by Matt Daymon) is trying to get out of Minnesota into Wisconsin, but is blocked by U.S. military. He gets out of his car, argues with the solder for a few seconds and then gives up and gets in his car and turns around back into Minneapolis. No other attempts are made by his character to leave the area. He just goes home and thats it. Such a good law abiding citizen during times of crisis! (also extremely unrealistic) Another moment is when Mitch Emhoff is looking at his neighbors house one night and hears gunshots within his neighbors house, he dials 911 and gets no response, nothing else happens (though one might expect somthing would happen, but it doesent) He goes over to his neighbors house only to find nothing, except that he finds a gun and takes it home only to set it by the front door. You never see anything else happen regarding the gun or an attempt of looters to break into his house. The movie just jumps to a different character. By the end of the movie it does have an interesting ending of how the virus began, but otherwise it was a very dull movie that could have done so much more. What a waste of money. The best part of the movie was when I got to get up and leave the theater.

For those who think this movie was great, probably have not seen "Outbreak" or even Steven Kings "The Stand". Those doomsday senario movies are much better thought out, directed, and executed.