CONTAGION - Review

After putting it off since the beginning of lockdown, I finally got around to watching ‘Contagion’, a film depicting the worldwide spread of a fictional virus and the efforts to control it. What struck me throughout the film was just how similar (albeit more dramatised) the events were to the timeline of the outbreak of COVID-19. In hindsight, I’m glad I waited as I think it would have been quite unsettling to watch the events from the film play out in real life.

I found it very gripping and there were great performances all around but one of my favourite aspects was the colour treatment. Shots are bathed in either a horrible sickly yellow or cold dead blue, giving a permanent sense of uneasiness. As the plot covers the spread of the disease worldwide and focusses on multiple characters in different countries, there is obviously a need to jump back and forth between storylines. This is sometimes clunky and badly timed however, leaving too much time between leaving and returning to a character. There was one instance in particular where the film jumped back to Marion Cotillard’s character’s storyline and I’d honestly forgotten about that section of the film.

Another slight issue I took with the film was with the ending where we are shown exactly how the virus came to be. Part of me felt like it would have been better to leave this ambiguous and it did feel like it was somewhat unnecessarily shoved onto the end to provide a resolve for people who want to know the origin of the pandemic. On the other hand, I did like that there wasn’t a happy Hollywood ending where everything turns out fine.

Overall rating: 6/10