Contagion

2011
PG-13
1h 46m

IMDb RATING

6.8/10

321K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

Play trailer2:33

Disaster Drama Thriller

Healthcare professionals, government officials and everyday people find themselves in the midst of a pandemic as the CDC works to find a cure.Healthcare professionals, government officials and everyday people find themselves in the midst of a pandemic as the CDC works to find a cure.Healthcare professionals, government officials and everyday people find themselves in the midst of a pandemic as the CDC works to find a cure.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.8/10

321K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

2,051

146

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 2 wins & 14 nominations total

Videos29

Trailer 2:27

Contagion

Clip 0:55

Contagion: We've Exhausted Our Supply

Clip 1:07

Contagion: There Continue To Be Evacuations

Clip 0:31

Contagion: It's Figuring Us Out Faster Than We Can Figure It Out

Clip 0:47

Contagion: What Happened?

Photos288

+ 282

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
To promote this film, Warner Bros. Pictures Canada built two giant Petri dishes treated with bacteria and fungi and set them in a Toronto storefront window. Over several days, the bacteria and fungi specimens grew to spell out the name of the film and form biohazard symbols.

Goofs
When Li Fai, the Hong Kong patient, exits the elevator on his way home, the two red Chinese characters on the wall means "the 10th floor", while the display of the elevator says it's the 9th. However, this is likely not a goof. Floor numbering has become quite confused in Hong Kong due to a combination of British numbering (ground floor -> 1st -> 2nd -> 3rd) and the Chinese system which counts the ground floor as the 1st. Also, due to other traditions in regard to the number 4, that number may be skipped when numbering the floors. Like the number 13 in some Western countries, 4 is considered unlucky because it sounds like "to die" in Cantonese. For example, it's considered unlucky to arrange lucky bamboos in groups of four.

Quotes
Dr. Ally Hextall: We've sequenced the virus, determined its origin and we've modeled the way it enters the cells of the lung and the brain. The virus contains both bat and pig sequences. The dark green is pig, and the light green is bat. And here you can see the crossover event. Bat, bat, and pig, bat. And here is a model of the virus and how it attaches to its host. The blue is virus, and the gold is human, and the red is the viral attachment protein and the green is its receptor in the human cells. These receptors are found in the cells of both the respiratory tract and the central nervous system. And the virus attaches to the cell like a key slipping into a lock. Somewhere in the world, the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat.

Crazy credits
There are no opening credits.

Connections
Featured in Chris Stuckmann Movie Reviews: Contagion (2011)

Soundtracks
Amante Del Vino
Written and Performed by Michael J. Thomas
Courtesy of Harbor Breeze Records, by arrangement with Affix Music

User reviews931

Review

Featured review

8/10

A* For Accuracy

Having watched during the COVID-19 pandemic, the accuracy of this film released almost 10 years previous is eerie. Contagion does not skip on the science, and every scene was like a dramatic recap of press conferences in reality. The level of detail the filmmakers went into is phenomenal, and they cannot be credited enough. Even beyond the science of a virus, the human reaction is spot on, notably Jude Law's character, a convincing keyboard warrior.

The cast is packed with A-listers, and although there are a lot of characters, they all have a relatively compelling arc to follow. Evidently it is a big budget film, and the use of sporting venues as medical centres, etc., is perfectly life-like. Obviously, this fictional virus is a lot more aggressive than what is being witnessed currently, but it would be a very dull film if this wasn't the case, and it does well not to jump the shark and doesn't succumb to the urge to make the virus something truly cinematic.

Having said all this, and whilst I don't think for a virus film it could be improved, I do feel that living through something spookily similar does desensitise the audience. You're compelled by the accuracy, but the shocks of the progression and decline of society are hugely lessened when they're lived through every day.