Thursday, September 22, 2011
Germaphobes, beware. Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is an elegantly crafted horror film masquerading as a star-studded drama set against the outbreak of a devastating global virus, one that spreads through the subtlest contact and kills without warning. If you or any of your loved ones compulsively hoard Purell or shudder before touching a public doorknob, avoid this movie like the plague.
For the rest of us, though, “Contagion” is a clinically subversive achievement, the welcome return of the smart eco-thriller. The plot kicks in with the mysterious death of Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) who suffers a seizure only hours after returning home from Hong Kong to her husband (Matt Damon). The rest of the film unfolds as a series of character-driven vignettes, from a government bigwig (Laurence Fishburne) desperate to rescue his wife from the infected zone to a scientist (Kate Winslet) hot on the trail of Patient Zero, the original viral carrier. Jude Law also appears as an opportunistic blogger looking to use the epidemic to advance his own conspiracy theories and plug a bogus cure.
All of these big-name actors acquit themselves admirably in their purposely limited screentime and though their involvement could have proved distracting in a lesser work, “Contagion” gleefully dispatches them with refreshing disregard for star power. In fact, their mortality sells the terror. After all, if an Oscar winner isn’t safe, who is?
Additional praise must be given to Soderbergh, whose growing command of atmosphere gives the audience brief, harrowing glimpses of a world where panic and fear can kill you faster than any virus. Cliff Martinez’s synthesized soundtrack recalls some of the best conspiracy thrillers of the 1980s and envelops the movie in mounting dread. With these kinds of symptoms, it’s easy to see why many are calling this the scariest movie of 2011.
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