Contagion: A Review

By Alexandra Shworak

WARNING: This review contains spoilers!

Contagion is a must-see movie! Even I liked it, even though I wouldn’t go to see that kind of movie unless dragged there by my ponytail! Granted that parts of it are depressing, gross, or even scary, Contagion is still something to talk about. It’s a star-studded film, featuring Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, and many oth- ers.

To give a brief synopsis, the movie starts on Day 2 of a world- wide pandemic. It begins with clips of random people coughing and sneezing, for they have contracted the contagion. Then we see the soon-to-be-evident index case, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), in an airport in Chicago, very sick. She has just flown Hong Kong-London- Chicago, spreading germs as she went. Still sick, she returns home to her husband Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon) and her son Clark (Griffin Kane), whom she infects. The next day, Beth stays home, worse than ever, and Clark gets sent home sick from school. Before long, both have died—and it’s only Day 4. In other parts of the world, many other people are getting sick, getting other people sick, and dying. Meanwhile, the CDC, led by Dr. Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburn) and assisted by Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet), tries to figure out this rapidly annihilating disease…

My main question after watching a movie like Contagion is, What is the point? Where’s the hidden message? The answer comes at the end, when you see that the beginnings of the disease sprang from habitat destruction. I’m a big “Save The Rain Forest” type of person, and I was the only one in my family to notice this hidden point. The habitats and ecosystems on this earth are fragile, and even one little thing can change the future, not only for that ecosystem, but for the surrounding areas and the world. A more extreme example of this is in the movie A Sound Of Thunder, when that guy steps on the butterfly and changes the future of the planet. This seems a little extreme, but what if a crucial animal, plant or insect that would have changed the world in some way were destroyed? Would the fate of the world be at stake then?

By destroying habitats, you set all kinds of variables in motion, including disease. The only reason this contagious disease was set into play was the destruction of an ani- mal habitat, and it killed millions of people! If you could redo that moment—save the environment and stop the contagion—would you?