Contagion (film)
Encyclopedia
Contagion is a 2011 American medical thriller
disaster film
directed by Steven Soderbergh
. The film has an ensemble cast
that includes Marion Cotillard
, Matt Damon
, Laurence Fishburne
, Jude Law
, Gwyneth Paltrow
, Kate Winslet
, and Bryan Cranston
. Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal indirect contact transmission virus (fomite
transmission
) that kills within days. As the fast-moving pandemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than does the virus itself. As the virus spreads around the world, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.
The film had a production budget of , and filming took place in countries around the world. It premiered on , 2011, at the 68th Venice Film Festival and was publicly released to strong critical acclaim on , 2011, in the United States, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, and four other territories.
Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow
) returns from a business trip to Hong Kong, after briefly stopping in Chicago to cheat on her husband with an old flame. At first she appears to have contracted a common cold
during her trip. However, her condition worsens and two days later she collapses with severe seizures in her Minneapolis home; her son, Clark, also begins to show cold symptoms. Her husband, Mitch, (Matt Damon
) rushes her to the hospital, but she simply has more seizures there and dies from an unknown type of meningoencephalitis
. Mitch returns home and finds that his stepson, Clark, has also died from the unknown infection. Mitch is put in isolation but turns out to be immune to the disease. He and his daughter attempt to flee the city, but a military quarantine has been imposed, and they are forced to return to their home to face decaying social order
and rampant looting of stores and homes. Mitch struggles to balance his daughter's frustration with quarantine with his desire to protect her, while trying to come to terms with his own loss.
In Atlanta, representatives from the Department of Homeland Security meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne
) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and express fears that the disease is a bioweapon intended to cause terror over the Thanksgiving
weekend. Cheever sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet
), an Epidemic Intelligence Service
officer, to Minneapolis to begin the investigation. Dr. Mears has to negotiate with local bureaucrats reluctant to commit resources and becomes infected with the disease after being in contact with contaminated fomites while staying at her hotel. The Minnesota National Guard
arrives to quarantine the city, and a badly deteriorating Dr. Mears is moved to the field medical station she helped set up, where she later dies.
Investigations into cures via treatment protocols or vaccines initially prove fruitless as scientists cannot find a culture
to grow the new virus, which has been named the Meningoencephalitis Virus One (MEV-1)
. Professor Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould
) violates orders from a CDC scientist, Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle
), to destroy his samples and identifies a line of bat cells that will support research of a vaccine. At the CDC, Dr. Hextall uses this breakthrough to begin to characterize the properties of the virus, which turns out to have a mix of genetic material from bat and pig viruses and appears to spread via fomite
s with a basic reproduction number
of two.
A conspiratorially minded freelance internet journalist, Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law
), posts the first video blogs about the disease, and in one of them apparently appears sick and later claims that he recovered using a homeopathic cure called forsythia
. Panicked people attempting to obtain forsythia overwhelm pharmacies and also accelerate the contagion as infected and healthy people congregate. Krumwiede leaps to national attention and, during a television interview, accuses Dr. Cheever from CDC of informing friends and family to leave Chicago before a quarantine is imposed. It is later revealed Krumwiede was never sick with the unknown virus but was attempting to boost demand on behalf of investors in the companies producing and distributing the homeopathic treatment. He is taken by the police accused of conspiracy and fraud, but is soon released after his 12 million blog readers collect and pay his bail. Krumwiede is last seen returning to his internet journalism, interviewing the people attending the MEV-1 vaccination lines and questioning the safety of the rushed immunotherapy treatment and its yet unseen secondary and adverse effects.
Dr. Hextall identifies a potential vaccine, using an attenuated (live) virus. Because of the difficulties of human subjects testing, she follows the precedent of other vaccine researchers and inoculates herself first. Hextall visits her gravely ill father in the hospital to expose herself to the virus and test the vaccine. Production of the vaccine is rapidly ramped up, and the CDC awards vaccinations via a random lottery based on birth dates for one full year until every survivor is vaccinated. Dr. Cheever, remorseful about the deaths that his delayed action indirectly caused, gave his fast-tracked MEV-1 vaccination to the son of a janitor (John Hawkes
) he works with at the disease center. Dr. Hextall places the surviving samples of the MEV-1 virus in cryogenic storage with N1H1 and SARS.
Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard
) is a World Health Organization
epidemiologist who travelled to Hong Kong to find out where the sickness originated. While there, she identifies Emhoff as patient zero. Epidemiologist Sun Feng (Chin Han
) kidnaps Orantes to use her as leverage to obtain the first MEV-1 vaccines for his village. After the vaccines arrive, Feng exchanges Orantes for the vaccines, which turn out to be placebos. Orantes rushes away when she is informed of this.
The film concludes by showing how the virus originated. Emhoff's mining corporation is clearing the jungle, and a bulldozer knocks over a palm tree in which infected bats were nesting. They fly out and one bat, the vector, lands on a banana plant, eating a chunk of banana. Not having its tree to return to, the bat flies to a nearby hog building, where it drops the banana into a pig sty, where a pig eats it and acquires the bat virus. The pig is then sold and slaughtered and is shown being prepared by a chef in the Macau
casino Beth Emhoff visited. The chef smears the pig's blood on his apron but does not wash his hands before shaking Beth's, thereby infecting her with the mutating pig and bat viruses and creating a new human variant, the MEV-1 strain.
responses, and the pervasiveness of interpersonal connections which can serve as vectors to spread disease
. Soderbergh acknowledged the salience of these post-apocalyptic
themes is heightened by reactions to the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina
. The movie was intended to realistically convey the "intense" and "unnerving" social and scientific reactions to a pandemic.
The film presents examples of crowd psychology
and collective behavior
which can lead to mass hysteria and the loss of social order
. The bafflement, outrage, and helplessness associated with the lack of information, combined with new media such as blogs, allows conspiracy theorists like Krumwiede to spread disinformation and fear, which become dangerous contagions in of themselves. Dr. Cheever must balance the need for full disclosure but avoid a panic and allow the time to characterize and respond to an unknown virus. The movie indirectly critiques the greed, selfishness, and hypocrisy of isolated acts in contemporary culture and the unintended consequences they can have in the context of a pandemic. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
recommends "social distancing" by forcibly isolating the healthy to limit the spread of the disease, which stands in stark opposition to contemporary demands for "social networking". Responding to the pandemic presents a paradox, as the contagiousness and lethality of the virus instils deep distrust of others but surviving and limiting the spread of the disease also requires individuals to work together.
Against this existential threat and fraying social order, the film also explores how individual characters bend or break existing rules for both selfish and selfless reasons. Dr. Hextall violates protocols by testing a potential vaccine on herself, Dr. Sussman continues experiments on a cell line despite orders to destroy his samples, Dr. Cheever notifies his wife to leave the city before a public quarantine is imposed, Sun Feng kidnaps Dr. Orantes to secure vaccine supplies for his village, Dr. Mears continues her containment work despite contracting the virus, and Krumwiede is paid to use his blog to peddle snake oil
cures so as to drive demand and profit for pharmaceutical investors.
Soderbergh repeatedly uses the cinemographic style of lingering and focusing on the items and objects which are touched by the infected and become vectors (fomite
s) to infect other people. These objects link characters together and reinforce the multi-narrative "hyperlink cinema
" style which Soderbergh developed in Traffic
(2002) and Syriana
(2005), which he produced.
The movie also highlights examples of political cronyism (a plane to evacuate Dr. Mears from Minneapolis is instead diverted to evacuate a Congressman), platitudes and rigid thinking (public health officials consider delaying the closing of shopping malls until after the Thanksgiving shopping season
), federal responders trying to navigate fifty separate state-level public health policies, and the heroism of Federal bureaucrats. Soderbergh does not use type-cast pharmaceutical executives or politicians as villains, but instead portrays bloggers such as Krumwiede in a negative light. Social media plays a role in Krumwiede's accusations against Dr. Cheever and in Emhoff's daughter's attempts to carry on a relationship with a boyfriend through text messaging. Other responses in the movie, such as Emhoff's appropriating a shotgun from a friend's abandoned house to protect his home from looters, imposition of federal quarantines and curfews, the allocation of vaccines by lottery, inadequate federal preparation and responses, and use of bar-coded wristbands to identify the inoculated highlight the complex tensions between freedom and order in responding to a pandemic. Soderbergh uses Emhoff to illustrate the micro-effects of macro-level decisions.
and written by Scott Z. Burns
. The project was announced in February 2010 with the news that Matt Damon
and Jude Law
were cast in Contagion in their first collaboration since The Talented Mr. Ripley
in 1999. They were later joined by the other star of that movie Gwyneth Paltrow
. Kate Winslet
and Marion Cotillard
joined the cast later in the month.
Soderbergh received cooperation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and also worked with a group of scientific advisers for the film. With a production budget of , filming began on , 2010 and was initially scheduled to last until , 2011. Filming locations included Atlanta, Chicago
, Minneapolis, Dubai
, Japan
, Switzerland
, the United Kingdom
, Brazil
, Russia
, and Malaysia. In Hong Kong
, filming took place at the Hong Kong International Airport
. By February of 2011, Contagion was being filmed in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
and other locations. Soderbergh filmed Contagion using Red Digital Cinema Camera Company's RED MX digital camera, which has a 4K image resolution
.
Though the film had a production budget of , The New York Times
reported, "[Box office] success means getting the audience to worry a little more at an already worrisome time." While the film is not being explicitly marketed as a horror film, it attracted the attention of horror fans. While Warner Bros.
included a "scare factor" in its marketing with taglines such as "Don't touch anyone", one of its backers Participant Media launched a social action campaign with instructions on how to deal with a pandemic, such as stockpiling bottled water. It also advertised "virus hunters" to viewers.
s three-week streak. Contagion grossed from its IMAX screenings. According to CinemaScore
, audiences gave the film a "B-" grade. More than 80% of the filmgoers were over 25 years old. According to Warner Bros., audiences were "evenly split" between genders.
The film was released in Italy, Hong Kong, and four other territories in the same opening weekend as the United States and Canada, and in the six territories, the film grossed over the weekend. It had an underwhelming opening of $705,000 in Italy and had a strong opening of $392,000 in Hong Kong. Contagion expanded to South Korea on , 2011, about to expand to the rest of Europe in October 2011. It was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on , 2011. The UK premiere was at the Cambridge Film Festival, on 25th September 2011, where Contagion was the "Surprise Film".
As of , Contagion has grossed an estimated in the United States and Canada and in other territories for a worldwide total of .
, 84% of critics gave the film a positive review, with an average critical score of 7.1/10, based on 214 professional reviews. The site's consensus stated, "Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart—and scary—disaster movie." Parmita Borah in her review wrote, "All of the characters have been treated with balanced empathy and make for the drama that a story like this requires to make it human." At Metacritic
, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 based on mainstream critical reviews, the film received an average score of 70 based on 38 reviews.
for practicing "in effect very successful science communication." Jabr cites story elements such as "the fact that before researchers can study a virus, they need to figure out how to grow it in cell cultures in the lab, without the virus destroying all the cells" as examples of accurate depictions of science.
Carl Zimmer
, a science writer, praised the film, stating, "It shows how reconstructing the course of an outbreak can provide crucial clues, such as how many people an infected person can give a virus to, how many of them get sick, and how many of them die." He also describes a conversation with the film's scientific consultant, W. Ian Lipkin
, in which Lipkin defended the rapid generation of a vaccine in the film. Zimmer writes that "Lipkin and his colleagues are now capable of figuring out how to trigger immune reactions to exotic viruses from animals in a matter of weeks, not months. And once they've created a vaccine, they don't have to use Eisenhower-era technology to manufacture it in bulk."
Paul Offit
, a pediatrician and vaccination expert, praised the depiction of science in the film, writing "typically when movies take on science, they tend to sacrifice the science in favor of drama. That wasn't true here." He cites the film's usage of concepts like R0
and fomite
s, as well as the fictional strain's origins, as examples of science well illustrated in the film.
Medical thriller
A medical thriller is a type of thriller with major elements regarding medicine, medical practice or surgery. Examples of such works are The Third Pandemic by Pierre Ouellette, Safari by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, works by Robin Cook, and the 2011 film Contagion....
disaster film
Disaster film
A disaster film is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject...
directed by Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
. The film has an ensemble cast
Ensemble cast
An ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principal actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production. This kind of casting became more popular in television series because it allows flexibility for writers to focus on...
that includes Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
, Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
, Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...
, Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
, Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en and Emma...
, Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
, and Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle, and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama...
. Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal indirect contact transmission virus (fomite
Fomite
A fomite is any inanimate object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms and hence transferring them from one individual to another. A fomite can be anything...
transmission
Transmission (medicine)
In medicine and biology, transmission is the passing of a communicable disease from an infected host individual or group to a conspecific individual or group, regardless of whether the other individual was previously infected...
) that kills within days. As the fast-moving pandemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than does the virus itself. As the virus spreads around the world, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.
The film had a production budget of , and filming took place in countries around the world. It premiered on , 2011, at the 68th Venice Film Festival and was publicly released to strong critical acclaim on , 2011, in the United States, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, and four other territories.
Plot synopsis
The film follows several interacting plotlines, with no single protagonist, over the course of several weeks from the initial outbreak and attempts to contain it, to panic and decay of social order, and, finally, to the introduction of a vaccine.Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en and Emma...
) returns from a business trip to Hong Kong, after briefly stopping in Chicago to cheat on her husband with an old flame. At first she appears to have contracted a common cold
Common cold
The common cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, caused primarily by rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. Common symptoms include a cough, sore throat, runny nose, and fever...
during her trip. However, her condition worsens and two days later she collapses with severe seizures in her Minneapolis home; her son, Clark, also begins to show cold symptoms. Her husband, Mitch, (Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
) rushes her to the hospital, but she simply has more seizures there and dies from an unknown type of meningoencephalitis
Meningoencephalitis
Meningoencephalitis is a medical condition that simultaneously resembles both meningitis, which is an infection or inflammation of the meninges, and encephalitis, which is an infection or inflammation of the brain.-Causes:...
. Mitch returns home and finds that his stepson, Clark, has also died from the unknown infection. Mitch is put in isolation but turns out to be immune to the disease. He and his daughter attempt to flee the city, but a military quarantine has been imposed, and they are forced to return to their home to face decaying social order
Social order
Social order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences. It refers to a set of linked social structures, social institutions and social practices which conserve, maintain and enforce "normal" ways of relating and behaving....
and rampant looting of stores and homes. Mitch struggles to balance his daughter's frustration with quarantine with his desire to protect her, while trying to come to terms with his own loss.
In Atlanta, representatives from the Department of Homeland Security meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...
) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...
and express fears that the disease is a bioweapon intended to cause terror over the Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...
weekend. Cheever sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
), an Epidemic Intelligence Service
Epidemic Intelligence Service
The Epidemic Intelligence Service is a program of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Established in 1951, due to biological warfare concerns arising from the Korean War, it has become a hands-on two-year postgraduate training program in epidemiology, with a focus on...
officer, to Minneapolis to begin the investigation. Dr. Mears has to negotiate with local bureaucrats reluctant to commit resources and becomes infected with the disease after being in contact with contaminated fomites while staying at her hotel. The Minnesota National Guard
Minnesota National Guard
The Minnesota National Guard is composed of approximately 14,000 soldiers of the Minnesota Army National Guard and Airmen of the Minnesota Air National Guard, serving in 63 communities across the state. The Constitution of the United States specifically charges the National Guard with dual federal...
arrives to quarantine the city, and a badly deteriorating Dr. Mears is moved to the field medical station she helped set up, where she later dies.
Investigations into cures via treatment protocols or vaccines initially prove fruitless as scientists cannot find a culture
Microbiological culture
A microbiological culture, or microbial culture, is a method of multiplying microbial organisms by letting them reproduce in predetermined culture media under controlled laboratory conditions. Microbial cultures are used to determine the type of organism, its abundance in the sample being tested,...
to grow the new virus, which has been named the Meningoencephalitis Virus One (MEV-1)
Meningoencephalitis Virus One
Meningoencephalitis Virus One is the fictional highly contagious and lethal meningoencephalitic virus that appears in the 2011 film Contagion....
. Professor Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould
Elliott Gould is an American actor. He began acting in Hollywood films during the 1960s, and has remained prolific ever since. Some of his most notable films include M*A*S*H and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, for which he received an Oscar nomination...
) violates orders from a CDC scientist, Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle
Jennifer Ehle
Jennifer Ehle is an American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.-Early life:...
), to destroy his samples and identifies a line of bat cells that will support research of a vaccine. At the CDC, Dr. Hextall uses this breakthrough to begin to characterize the properties of the virus, which turns out to have a mix of genetic material from bat and pig viruses and appears to spread via fomite
Fomite
A fomite is any inanimate object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms and hence transferring them from one individual to another. A fomite can be anything...
s with a basic reproduction number
Basic reproduction number
In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number of an infection is the mean number of secondary cases caused by an individual infected soon after disease introduction into a population with no pre-existing immunity to the disease in the absence of interventions to control...
of two.
A conspiratorially minded freelance internet journalist, Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
), posts the first video blogs about the disease, and in one of them apparently appears sick and later claims that he recovered using a homeopathic cure called forsythia
Forsythia
Forsythia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae . There are about 11 species, mostly native to eastern Asia, but one native to southeastern Europe. The common name is also Forsythia; the genus is named after William Forsyth.-Growth:They are deciduous shrubs typically growing to a...
. Panicked people attempting to obtain forsythia overwhelm pharmacies and also accelerate the contagion as infected and healthy people congregate. Krumwiede leaps to national attention and, during a television interview, accuses Dr. Cheever from CDC of informing friends and family to leave Chicago before a quarantine is imposed. It is later revealed Krumwiede was never sick with the unknown virus but was attempting to boost demand on behalf of investors in the companies producing and distributing the homeopathic treatment. He is taken by the police accused of conspiracy and fraud, but is soon released after his 12 million blog readers collect and pay his bail. Krumwiede is last seen returning to his internet journalism, interviewing the people attending the MEV-1 vaccination lines and questioning the safety of the rushed immunotherapy treatment and its yet unseen secondary and adverse effects.
Dr. Hextall identifies a potential vaccine, using an attenuated (live) virus. Because of the difficulties of human subjects testing, she follows the precedent of other vaccine researchers and inoculates herself first. Hextall visits her gravely ill father in the hospital to expose herself to the virus and test the vaccine. Production of the vaccine is rapidly ramped up, and the CDC awards vaccinations via a random lottery based on birth dates for one full year until every survivor is vaccinated. Dr. Cheever, remorseful about the deaths that his delayed action indirectly caused, gave his fast-tracked MEV-1 vaccination to the son of a janitor (John Hawkes
John Hawkes (actor)
John Hawkes is an American film and television actor. He is known for his portrayal of the merchant Sol Star on the HBO series Deadwood, Dustin Powers on Eastbound & Down, and his Academy Award-nominated performance as the menacing backwoods meth addict Teardrop in Winter's Bone.-Life and...
) he works with at the disease center. Dr. Hextall places the surviving samples of the MEV-1 virus in cryogenic storage with N1H1 and SARS.
Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
) is a World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
epidemiologist who travelled to Hong Kong to find out where the sickness originated. While there, she identifies Emhoff as patient zero. Epidemiologist Sun Feng (Chin Han
Chin Han
Ng Chin Han , usually credited as just Chin Han, is a Singaporean actor of stage, film and television whose career has spanned over twenty years. He starred in Masters of the Sea, Singapore television's first foray into English-language drama. In recent years he broke into the Hollywood film...
) kidnaps Orantes to use her as leverage to obtain the first MEV-1 vaccines for his village. After the vaccines arrive, Feng exchanges Orantes for the vaccines, which turn out to be placebos. Orantes rushes away when she is informed of this.
The film concludes by showing how the virus originated. Emhoff's mining corporation is clearing the jungle, and a bulldozer knocks over a palm tree in which infected bats were nesting. They fly out and one bat, the vector, lands on a banana plant, eating a chunk of banana. Not having its tree to return to, the bat flies to a nearby hog building, where it drops the banana into a pig sty, where a pig eats it and acquires the bat virus. The pig is then sold and slaughtered and is shown being prepared by a chef in the Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
casino Beth Emhoff visited. The chef smears the pig's blood on his apron but does not wash his hands before shaking Beth's, thereby infecting her with the mutating pig and bat viruses and creating a new human variant, the MEV-1 strain.
Cast
- Marion CotillardMarion CotillardMarion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
as Dr. Leonora Orantes - Matt DamonMatt DamonMatthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
as Mitch Emhoff - Laurence FishburneLaurence FishburneLaurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...
as Dr. Ellis Cheever - Jude LawJude LawDavid Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
as Alan Krumwiede - Gwyneth PaltrowGwyneth PaltrowGwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en and Emma...
as Beth Emhoff - Anna-Jacoby Heron as Jory Emhoff
- Kate WinsletKate WinsletKate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
as Dr. Erin Mears - Jennifer EhleJennifer EhleJennifer Ehle is an American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.-Early life:...
as Dr. Ally Hextall - Enrico ColantoniEnrico ColantoniEnrico Colantoni is a Canadian actor, probably best known for portraying Elliot DiMauro in the sitcom Just Shoot Me!, Keith Mars on the television series Veronica Mars, and Sergeant Greg Parker on the television series Flashpoint. He has also had supporting roles in such films as The Wrong Guy, ...
as Dennis French - Bryan CranstonBryan CranstonBryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle, and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama...
as RADM Lyle Haggerty, PHSCC - Griffin Kane as Clark Morrow
- Sanaa LathanSanaa LathanSanaa McCoy Lathan is an American actress and voice actress. She has starred in numerous movies, including the box-office hits Love & Basketball, Alien vs. Predator, Something New, and The Family That Preys. Lathan was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun...
as Aubrey Cheever - Demetri MartinDemetri MartinDemetri Martin is an American comedian, actor, artist, musician, writer and humorist. Martin is best known for his work as a stand-up comedian, contributor on The Daily Show and for his Comedy Central show Important Things with Demetri Martin.- Early life :Demetri Martin was born to a Greek...
as Dr. David Eisenberg - Elliott GouldElliott GouldElliott Gould is an American actor. He began acting in Hollywood films during the 1960s, and has remained prolific ever since. Some of his most notable films include M*A*S*H and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, for which he received an Oscar nomination...
as Dr. Ian Sussman - Chin HanChin HanNg Chin Han , usually credited as just Chin Han, is a Singaporean actor of stage, film and television whose career has spanned over twenty years. He starred in Masters of the Sea, Singapore television's first foray into English-language drama. In recent years he broke into the Hollywood film...
as Sun Feng - John HawkesJohn Hawkes (actor)John Hawkes is an American film and television actor. He is known for his portrayal of the merchant Sol Star on the HBO series Deadwood, Dustin Powers on Eastbound & Down, and his Academy Award-nominated performance as the menacing backwoods meth addict Teardrop in Winter's Bone.-Life and...
as Roger - Amr WakedAmr WakedAmr Waked is an Egyptian film, television, and stage actor, known for his roles portraying Middle Eastern and Mediterranean characters. He is best known to international audiences and in Hollywood as the terrorist leader in the 2005 film Syriana...
as Rafik - Daria StrokousDaria StrokousDaria Strokous is a Russian model, film actress, and photographer. Strokous was born in Moscow, Soviet Union, then still part of the Soviet Union, to Vladimir Strokous, a prominent business man in the city, and Olga Strokous...
as Irina - Dr. Sanjay GuptaSanjay GuptaSanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon and an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia....
as himself - Chui-Tien-you as Li Fai
- Josephine Ho Chiu-YiJosie HoJosephine "Josie" Ho Chiu-Yi is a daughter of Macao casino magnate Stanley Ho, and a singer and actress from Hong Kong.-Movie career:She was involved in numerous movies, TV commercials, TV dramas, and singing performances....
as Li Fai's sister - Armin RohdeArmin Rohde-Filmography:- References :* Tobias Haucke and Timo Rieg : Bochumer Bekannte 2. biblioviel Verlag, Bochum 2003. ISBN 3-928781-82-0....
as Daimian Leopold
Themes
Soderbergh was motivated to make an "ultra-realistic" film about the public health and scientific response to a pandemic. The movie touches on a variety of themes, including the factors which drive mass panic and loss of social order, the scientific process for characterizing and containing a novel pathogen, balancing personal motives against professional responsibilities and rules in the face of an existential threat, the limitations and consequences of public healthPublic health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...
responses, and the pervasiveness of interpersonal connections which can serve as vectors to spread disease
Transmission (medicine)
In medicine and biology, transmission is the passing of a communicable disease from an infected host individual or group to a conspecific individual or group, regardless of whether the other individual was previously infected...
. Soderbergh acknowledged the salience of these post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
themes is heightened by reactions to the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
. The movie was intended to realistically convey the "intense" and "unnerving" social and scientific reactions to a pandemic.
The film presents examples of crowd psychology
Crowd psychology
Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...
and collective behavior
Collective behavior
The expression collective behaviour was first used by Robert E. Park, and employed definitively by Herbert Blumer, to refer to social processes and events which do not reflect existing social structure , but which emerge in a "spontaneous" way.Collective behavior might also be defined as action...
which can lead to mass hysteria and the loss of social order
Social order
Social order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences. It refers to a set of linked social structures, social institutions and social practices which conserve, maintain and enforce "normal" ways of relating and behaving....
. The bafflement, outrage, and helplessness associated with the lack of information, combined with new media such as blogs, allows conspiracy theorists like Krumwiede to spread disinformation and fear, which become dangerous contagions in of themselves. Dr. Cheever must balance the need for full disclosure but avoid a panic and allow the time to characterize and respond to an unknown virus. The movie indirectly critiques the greed, selfishness, and hypocrisy of isolated acts in contemporary culture and the unintended consequences they can have in the context of a pandemic. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...
recommends "social distancing" by forcibly isolating the healthy to limit the spread of the disease, which stands in stark opposition to contemporary demands for "social networking". Responding to the pandemic presents a paradox, as the contagiousness and lethality of the virus instils deep distrust of others but surviving and limiting the spread of the disease also requires individuals to work together.
Against this existential threat and fraying social order, the film also explores how individual characters bend or break existing rules for both selfish and selfless reasons. Dr. Hextall violates protocols by testing a potential vaccine on herself, Dr. Sussman continues experiments on a cell line despite orders to destroy his samples, Dr. Cheever notifies his wife to leave the city before a public quarantine is imposed, Sun Feng kidnaps Dr. Orantes to secure vaccine supplies for his village, Dr. Mears continues her containment work despite contracting the virus, and Krumwiede is paid to use his blog to peddle snake oil
Snake oil
Snake oil is a topical preparation made from the Chinese Water Snake , which is used to treat joint pain. However, the most common usage of the phrase is as a derogatory term for quack medicine...
cures so as to drive demand and profit for pharmaceutical investors.
Soderbergh repeatedly uses the cinemographic style of lingering and focusing on the items and objects which are touched by the infected and become vectors (fomite
Fomite
A fomite is any inanimate object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms and hence transferring them from one individual to another. A fomite can be anything...
s) to infect other people. These objects link characters together and reinforce the multi-narrative "hyperlink cinema
Hyperlink cinema
Hyperlink cinema is a term coined by author Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film Happy Endings for the film journal Film Comment in 2005. Film critic Roger Ebert popularized the term when reviewing the film Syriana in 2005...
" style which Soderbergh developed in Traffic
Traffic (2000 film)
Traffic is a 2000 American crime drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Stephen Gaghan. It explores the illegal drug trade from a number of perspectives: a user, an enforcer, a politician and a trafficker. Their stories are edited together throughout the film, although some of the...
(2002) and Syriana
Syriana
Syriana is a 2005 geopolitical thriller film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, and executive produced by George Clooney, who also stars in the film with an ensemble cast. Gaghan's screenplay is loosely adapted from Robert Baer's memoir See No Evil...
(2005), which he produced.
The movie also highlights examples of political cronyism (a plane to evacuate Dr. Mears from Minneapolis is instead diverted to evacuate a Congressman), platitudes and rigid thinking (public health officials consider delaying the closing of shopping malls until after the Thanksgiving shopping season
Black Friday (shopping)
Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early, often at 4 a.m., or earlier, and offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season, similar to Boxing...
), federal responders trying to navigate fifty separate state-level public health policies, and the heroism of Federal bureaucrats. Soderbergh does not use type-cast pharmaceutical executives or politicians as villains, but instead portrays bloggers such as Krumwiede in a negative light. Social media plays a role in Krumwiede's accusations against Dr. Cheever and in Emhoff's daughter's attempts to carry on a relationship with a boyfriend through text messaging. Other responses in the movie, such as Emhoff's appropriating a shotgun from a friend's abandoned house to protect his home from looters, imposition of federal quarantines and curfews, the allocation of vaccines by lottery, inadequate federal preparation and responses, and use of bar-coded wristbands to identify the inoculated highlight the complex tensions between freedom and order in responding to a pandemic. Soderbergh uses Emhoff to illustrate the micro-effects of macro-level decisions.
Production
Contagion is directed by Steven SoderberghSteven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
and written by Scott Z. Burns
Scott Z. Burns
Scott Z. Burns is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. He has written screenplays for The Bourne Ultimatum , The Informant! , and Contagion , all of which feature Matt Damon. His latest two films were both directed by Steven Soderbergh...
. The project was announced in February 2010 with the news that Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
and Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
were cast in Contagion in their first collaboration since The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley (film)
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1999 American psychological thriller written for the screen and directed by Anthony Minghella. It is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith 1955 novel of the same name, which was previously filmed as Plein Soleil .The film stars Matt Damon as Tom Ripley, Gwyneth...
in 1999. They were later joined by the other star of that movie Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en and Emma...
. Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
and Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
joined the cast later in the month.
Soderbergh received cooperation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...
and also worked with a group of scientific advisers for the film. With a production budget of , filming began on , 2010 and was initially scheduled to last until , 2011. Filming locations included Atlanta, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Minneapolis, Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and Malaysia. In Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, filming took place at the Hong Kong International Airport
Hong Kong International Airport
Hong Kong International Airport is the main airport in Hong Kong. It is colloquially known as Chek Lap Kok Airport , being built on the island of Chek Lap Kok by land reclamation, and also to distinguish it from its predecessor, the closed Kai Tak Airport.The airport opened for commercial...
. By February of 2011, Contagion was being filmed in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is a multi-purpose arena in San Francisco, California, currently named after promoter Bill Graham...
and other locations. Soderbergh filmed Contagion using Red Digital Cinema Camera Company's RED MX digital camera, which has a 4K image resolution
Image resolution
Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail....
.
Crew
- Steven SoderberghSteven SoderberghSteven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
– director - Scott Z. BurnsScott Z. BurnsScott Z. Burns is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. He has written screenplays for The Bourne Ultimatum , The Informant! , and Contagion , all of which feature Matt Damon. His latest two films were both directed by Steven Soderbergh...
– screenplay - Michael ShambergMichael ShambergMichael Shamberg is an American former Time-Life correspondent and current film producer.-Life and career:His credits include Erin Brockovich, A Fish Called Wanda, Garden State, Gattaca, Pulp Fiction and The Big Chill...
– producer - Stacey SherStacey Sher-Early life:Born in New York but raised in Fort Lauderdale, Sher is a graduate of University of Southern California's Peter Stark Producing Program.-Movie career:...
– producer - Gregory Jacobs – producer
- Cliff MartinezCliff MartinezCliff Martinez is an American film score composer and former drummer.-Biography:Cliff Martinez was born in the Bronx, New York. Raised in Columbus, Ohio, his first job composing was for the popular television show Pee Wee's Playhouse...
– music - Stephen MirrioneStephen MirrioneStephen Mirrione is an American film editor. He won an Academy Award for his editing of the film Traffic .-Life and career:...
– editor - Howard Cummings – production design
- Abdellah Baadil – art direction
- Simon Dobbin – art direction
- David Lazan – art direction
- Cindy CarrCindy CarrCindy Carr is an American set decorator. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction.-Selected filmography:* The Fisher King * What Dreams May Come -External links:...
– set decoration - Louise Frogley – costume design
Release
Contagion had its world première on , 2011 at the 68th Venice Film Festival. On the weekend of , the studio held advance screenings in around the United States. The film was publicly released on , 2011 in the United States, Canada, Italy, and five other territories. It was originally scheduled to be released on , 2011.Though the film had a production budget of , The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported, "[Box office] success means getting the audience to worry a little more at an already worrisome time." While the film is not being explicitly marketed as a horror film, it attracted the attention of horror fans. While Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
included a "scare factor" in its marketing with taglines such as "Don't touch anyone", one of its backers Participant Media launched a social action campaign with instructions on how to deal with a pandemic, such as stockpiling bottled water. It also advertised "virus hunters" to viewers.
Box office
In the United States and Canada, Contagion was released in , which include screenings. Before its release, box office analysts predicted that the film would gross between and . Over the opening weekend, it grossed an estimated and ranked first at the box office, ending The HelpThe Help (film)
The Help is a 2011 comedy-drama film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's novel of the same name. The film is about a young white woman, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, and her relationship with two black maids during Civil Rights era America in the early 1960s...
s three-week streak. Contagion grossed from its IMAX screenings. According to CinemaScore
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.-Background:...
, audiences gave the film a "B-" grade. More than 80% of the filmgoers were over 25 years old. According to Warner Bros., audiences were "evenly split" between genders.
The film was released in Italy, Hong Kong, and four other territories in the same opening weekend as the United States and Canada, and in the six territories, the film grossed over the weekend. It had an underwhelming opening of $705,000 in Italy and had a strong opening of $392,000 in Hong Kong. Contagion expanded to South Korea on , 2011, about to expand to the rest of Europe in October 2011. It was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on , 2011. The UK premiere was at the Cambridge Film Festival, on 25th September 2011, where Contagion was the "Surprise Film".
As of , Contagion has grossed an estimated in the United States and Canada and in other territories for a worldwide total of .
Critical reception
Contagion has received strongly positive reviews from critics who saw the film at its world première at the Venice Film Festival. According to review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, 84% of critics gave the film a positive review, with an average critical score of 7.1/10, based on 214 professional reviews. The site's consensus stated, "Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart—and scary—disaster movie." Parmita Borah in her review wrote, "All of the characters have been treated with balanced empathy and make for the drama that a story like this requires to make it human." At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 based on mainstream critical reviews, the film received an average score of 70 based on 38 reviews.
Scientific accuracy
Soderbergh and Burns have been praised by Ferris Jabr in the New ScientistNew Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
for practicing "in effect very successful science communication." Jabr cites story elements such as "the fact that before researchers can study a virus, they need to figure out how to grow it in cell cultures in the lab, without the virus destroying all the cells" as examples of accurate depictions of science.
Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer is a popular science writer and blogger, especially regarding the study of evolution and parasites. He has written several books and contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times and Discover...
, a science writer, praised the film, stating, "It shows how reconstructing the course of an outbreak can provide crucial clues, such as how many people an infected person can give a virus to, how many of them get sick, and how many of them die." He also describes a conversation with the film's scientific consultant, W. Ian Lipkin
W. Ian Lipkin
W. Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Professor of Neurology and Pathology at College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University...
, in which Lipkin defended the rapid generation of a vaccine in the film. Zimmer writes that "Lipkin and his colleagues are now capable of figuring out how to trigger immune reactions to exotic viruses from animals in a matter of weeks, not months. And once they've created a vaccine, they don't have to use Eisenhower-era technology to manufacture it in bulk."
Paul Offit
Paul Offit
Paul A. Offit, M.D., is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day. Offit is the Maurice R...
, a pediatrician and vaccination expert, praised the depiction of science in the film, writing "typically when movies take on science, they tend to sacrifice the science in favor of drama. That wasn't true here." He cites the film's usage of concepts like R0
Basic reproduction number
In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number of an infection is the mean number of secondary cases caused by an individual infected soon after disease introduction into a population with no pre-existing immunity to the disease in the absence of interventions to control...
and fomite
Fomite
A fomite is any inanimate object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms and hence transferring them from one individual to another. A fomite can be anything...
s, as well as the fictional strain's origins, as examples of science well illustrated in the film.