Contagion (2011) – Analysis

By: Jay

I saw Contagion with a theater full of baby-boomers and senior citizens who frequently commented throughout how realistic and scary Contagion was.  I had to snicker at this.  Contagion is like a remake of Outbreak, and Outbreak is awful.  Outbreak is worse than the worst episode of the A-Team, minus the captivating dialogue.  Contagion isn’t much better, aside from the good acting with the all-star lineup.  The entire film is like watching a public service announcement for government vaccines: something they would make you watch in high school.  It’s total fear propaganda – the only thing contagious is the fear spread by the film.  I’m reminded of the “H1N1″ scare of a few years back, where the system told us we were all dead.  And what happened? Nothing. Only the weakest minded, most  oblivious fools still thinks the system loves the public and has its best interest at heart.

Connections are made in the film to SARS, which was an engineered bio release, and as I watched, I immediately thought of V for Vendetta, where a planned bio-release kills thousands of Catholics. Recently, the BBC did a show called Survivors that was well done along the same lines, where a pharmaceutical corporation allows a bio-release to get out, killing 95% of the population.   In fact, the BBC pops up in the film, as well as CNN’s Sanjay Gupta.  This should tell you who’s on the inside in terms of mass media.  I’m reminded as well of The Stand, The Passage, and a host of other Zombie films.  We seem to have an apocalyptic fascination in Amerika.  In fact, the “virus” in Contagion is a pig-bat-bird mutation that kills within 24 hours.   Read more of this post