Cinema review: Contagion

A terrible new virus is spreading.

Finally an original movie that eschew the terribly boring three act structure that Hollywood seems to love so much. Steven Soderbergh is an example of the virtues and the vices of the modern American storytelling. He actively tries to remain original and explore new content and new ground with every movie that ne makes. This is certainly commendable but on the other side his “independent” output is more miss than hit, this is because that infamous structure while still boring and soul destroying is a good and easy “road map” to give a movie focus and relatability. Sailing into uncharted water is a risky business, more often than not you’ll come back with your nets empty.

Therefore I’m happy that this time he returns to form. It certainly helps that here he got a strong hook that naturally eschew a traditional storytelling. This is literally the story of an epidemic and certainly we can’t see an epidemic learning something about itself and becoming a better virus in a movie (this putting aside from a moment the concept of mutations).

Soderbergh opt for an extremely realistic setting and a large ensemble cast with multiple points of view. The beginning of the movie is very good with a perfect pacing and a scary crescendo, we watch amazed and scared the epidemic grow exponentially while the various characters do their best to stop it or simply survive. This is aided by an original soundtrack that eschews the usual orchestral stuff for a fast beating electronic score.

Sadly toward the end it loses a lot of his momentum. From a movie like this we simply expect a lot of devastation and social disorder, the couple of scenes that the movie show us look paltry and an afterthought, maybe for budget reason but it really impacts the intensity of the movie.

Also the whole experience fells disjointed, there are simply too many plot threads, too much stuff is never shown or never explained, I understand that the protagonist is the epidemic but considering that what we are watching are human being reacting to that epidemic I would have liked to understand what happened to them a little bit more.

In the end this movie is an intense original experience that will leave you worried everytime you watch somebody sneezing.