I was very surprised to have never heard of Contagion up until a week before it’s release. I’m usually pretty knowledgeable when it comes to which movies are coming out when, and the fact that this one slipped under my radar made me initially pass it off as just another random thriller/horror movie (and honestly, the previews kind of made it seem that way). But then I saw the incredible cast and… well… I needed to see what this was all about.
Contagion is a lot of things, but disappointing isn’t one of them. It’s thoughtful, complex, slow, well-acted, realistic and chilling, to begin with. Most of these things are quite good, but in some ways the movie is at odds with itself. First, though, the good:
What I loved about Contagion was that it was completely different from any other virus movie I’ve ever seen. What this movie does is chronicle this virus from the very first cough up until the last, and the way it all plays out makes it feel much more like a documentary than an actual thriller. Soderbergh doesn’t pretend the viewer is stupid – we’re constantly being told more and more about the virus and being filled in on the various stages of it as scientists race to create a vaccine. Nothing is overly dramatic and nothing is anything less than completely believable. This movie sets out to be something incredibly ambitious, and it accomplishes a huge number of its goals.
The only thing that I’d dare say it doesn’t always accomplish is keeping a consistent pace. While the movie’s scenes are clearly thought out to the core, with plenty of well-weaved subplots to keep the viewer interested, the first half of the movie is quite slow. I wouldn’t say I got bored with it, but let’s just say they spend a lot of time discussing the emergence of the virus and how quickly it’s spreading, to the point where the details occasionally get a little bit excessive. Many of the details the movie provides are in fact very interesting, but as much as they are a strength of the movie they are also occasionally a weakness.
This brings me to the whole ‘ambition’ point from earlier. Contagion strives very hard to be a realistic take on the entire chronology of a super-virus, but it also tries hard to be an emotional story about people who are being affected by it. This balance is ever so slightly off (about 60-40 rather than 50-50) and the movie ends up having a little bit less of an emotional punch than it thinks it does. Near the end this definitely changes, as a personal moment with one of the main character nearly brought tears to my eyes. But before that its success in creating a genuine connection with its characters is perhaps about 80%.
This, however, is probably due to the movie’s incredibly short running time relative to the amount of content in it. The movie is so stuffed with plot, subplot and character development that you’d think it would take a solid two and a half hours, but as it stands it’s only about an hour and forty five minutes. This isn’t a bad thing, but I feel like the movie could have taken an extra fifteen minutes or so to add a little bit more character development in there. As it stands, it’s trying to do just a bit too much.
The amount of criticism I’m laying out here, though, is in no way an indication that this movie is bad – to the contrary, this is an excellent, deeply thought-provoking movie that simply squanders about 10% of its potential by trying to do too much within its running time. It’s still one of the best movie theater experiences this year (though so far that’s not a terribly high standard) and absolutely worth seeing for anybody even remotely interested in its premise. You’ll never see anything quite like Contagion, and in that sense, it is an absolute success.
8.5/10