Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
Cantagion (2011)
Let’s leave zombies out of this. Although in many movies, the undead are triggered virally, the cycle launched by director George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead has less to do with epidemiology than social satire—the mindless shuffling of the public as it consumes. Let’s look instead at fiction films that examine enemies unseen whose destructive power is apparent and whose potential to reshape the world is dangerous.
It Comes at Night (2017)
Grandfather caught the sickness and his family has no choice: In the opening scene from It Comes at Night, son-in-law Paul (Joel Edgerton) and grandson Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), wearing masks and gloves, lead the old man to a clearing outside the house. They cover his face, shoot him in the head, set his body on fire and trudge sadly away as smoke from the pyre reaches the treetops of the dark forest.
An unexplained pandemic has swept across civilization, leaving only scattered bands of survivors vulnerable to contagion by air or touch. The interracial family at the heart of It Comes at Night occupies a rambling house in the woods, windows boarded up with only one tightly bolted entrance.
Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults, It Comes at Night is a gripping drama steeped in the conventions of horror. The spooky tracking shots, slowly inching down the dark corridors, suggest a ghoulish apparition is imminent. But the clanging that erupts from the nocturnal darkness comes from living hands. Will (Christopher Abbott) is merely a stranger in search of water. Paul beats Will and ties him to a tree until assured that the stranger is healthy and means no harm.
Ebbing and flowing between unease and high anxiety, the emotional strain of It Comes at Night never ceases. Suspense and suspicion are palpable in the face of an implacable specter— the microbes of a sickness without a cure.
Contagion (2011)
Contagion begins on Day 2 as Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) chats on her cellphone at an airport lounge on her way home from Hong Kong. She looks tired. A few minutes into the film, on Day 4, she’s dead.
Director Steven Soderbergh recruited an A-List cast for a film on a challenging topic—a global pandemic that kills millions and threatens to knock the legs out from under civilization. Matt Damon plays Beth’s husband; Marion Cotillard, a WHO official; Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet costar as CDC physicians; and Jude Law as a blogger peddling alternative facts.
What’s remarkable about Contagion is how prescient it was—how close to the reality of the COVID-19 crisis nine years before it happened. Contagion’s virus (MEV-1) originates in China where an animal virus enters the human food chain. Soderbergh moves easily between continents, showing the worldwide spread of the disease as travelers fan out from China. Conspiracy theories go viral, trafficking in fear and distrust of experts. MEV-1 causes fever and pneumonia, is airborne and lingers on surfaces. People are advised to isolate themselves. The term “social distancing” is heard, Some carry MEV-1 without symptoms. People wear masks.
A rush on bottled water and hand sanitizers? Check. The only thing Soderbergh missed is the hoarding of toilet paper. Untested remedies are promoted and Soderbergh got the science and technology right. It takes many months to develop and conduct trials on a vaccine and then comes the challenge of manufacturing the serum in quantity and distributing it fairly.
Despite similarities, MEV-1 and its results are worse than COVID-19 to date. The death toll climbs to 2.5 million in the U.S. and social order breaks down. Nurses go on strike. Riots and looting trigger National Guard checkpoints and a nationwide curfew. One other difference: Contagion gives no sign that the country’s leader obstructs efforts by medical science or encourages his followers to fight for their right to get sick and infect others.
Outbreak (1995)
Dustin Hoffman is the unlikely action hero in this pandemic thriller. He plays Col. Sam Daniels, a virologist from the U.S. Army’s medical research center who commandeers aircraft and TV studios, leaps from a helicopter onto a moving ship at sea and—with the help of his sidekick, Maj. Salt (Cuba Gooding Jr.)—outraces Army choppers in a death-defying aerial chase.
In director Wolfgang Petersen’s film, the potential pandemic (the Motaba virus) originates in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Its carrier is a harmless-looking capuchin monkey whose scratches and bites turn deadly. The creature is earmarked for a research lab in California where a punk kid steals it to sell to a pet shop. Disease and death follow in the capuchin’s wake. Can Daniels find the monkey before it’s too late?
He’s not getting much help. “The chance for this virus to show up in the U.S. is virtually nil,” the CDC director declares. Outbreak’s science twist is that the virus mutates into an airborne plague causing fever, hemorrhaging, lesions, rapid collapse of organs. Fortunately, the airborne version is confined to the small town where the monkey escaped but it’s only a matter of time before it could spread.
The thriller twist is that Motaba has to do with a secret bio-weapons project under the villainous Gen. McClintock (Donald Sutherland). Can the benign Gen. Ford (Morgan Freeman) thwart his designs, which include bombing the town to prevent the virus’ spread (and cover his tracks)? The clock is ticking…
Outbreak is edge-of-the-seat Hollywood popcorn fare with some good cinematic moments and epidemiology along for the ride.
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
An American space satellite falls to Earth at a tumbleweed New Mexico town and the recovery team is in for a shock. Vultures circle overhead; streets and buildings are filled with the dead, who apparently dropped in mid-stride. Only an infant and an old man survived. Suspicion: the satellite is the carrier of an alien microorganism. What will be the government’s response?
The Andromeda Strain is based on a novel by Michael Crichton, a writer with some science on his college transcript. The idea was inspired in part by what happened when Europeans arrived in the New World; millions of natives died by having no immunity to unfamiliar diseases. If germs from another world somehow land on Earth, the resulting pandemic could end civilization (as we know it).
The screenplay pays unusual regard for the laborious, time-consuming process of experimental science. The querulous team assembled to investigate the microorganism work in careful steps, experimenting on rats and then monkeys, dissecting the dead townsfolk and probing the survivors for indicators of why they lived. What is distinct about them?
The scientists work under a president who distrusts science and dilly-dallies with the steps they suggest for containing the organism. The Andromeda Strain’s thriller aspect also derives from Deep State paranoia. Was the fallen satellite involved in a bioweapons project? And by the way, the organism (dubbed Andromeda Strain by the science team) not only clots blood but dissolves plastic.
Robert Wise directed the film with state of the art technology. Some of it was so cutting edge that it seems contemporary 40 years later, especially fingerprint identity scans and nanomedicine.
Panic in the Streets (1950)
Director Elia Kazan coated this film noir with the grit of the poorest wards of New Orleans, setting parts of his drama in the industrial intestines of the Crescent City. When the cops fish a body from the water, the coroner finds something other than the bullets that killed him. The unidentified dead man is infected with plague.
Enter federal health officer Clint Reed. He’s a medical doctor played with a tough guy sneer by Richard Widmark. Sarcasm on two feet, Reed must scramble to save the city from dithering politicians, disbelieving cops and lunkheads shouting, “I’m a citizen and I have rights!”
The grandparents of today’s anti-vaccination wingnuts don’t stand a chance with Reed. Poking with a needle a crook who knows something about the dead man, Reed says: “Roll up your sleeve and start talking.” The murderers are probably infected with the dead man’s disease; they are carriers who could spread the virus.
It’s a fast-paced chase across deep shadows and wet streets as Reed imposes short-term quarantines on any building touched by the virus. He reminds the science-deprived politicians that once the virus leaves New Orleans, it could be anywhere within hours. His message: “We’re all in a community—the same one.”
