Contagion (movie review)

If you have followed my blog closely, you’ll know that I am both an academic and a blogger. And that I sometimes blog about academic nerdery on my personal site (this one). A few months back, I wrote about how fascinated I was with the mathematical epidemiology of infectious diseases. Several Mexican scholars (who for the most part, live in the United States) have done some excellent contributions to our understanding of the mathematical models of spread of transmissible diseases such as SARS and H1N1.

Well, Contagion does a very good, pretty solid and well acted attempt at combining the epidemiological analysis behind the spread of a new virus (a mutated kind of bird flu mixed with bat and swine flu, very funny to be quite honest how they come up with the actual mutation). A high-level female executive for a company (Gwyneth Paltrow, aka Beth Emhoff) falls sick to something that kind of looks like SARS/H1N1 but ends up being a completely new virus. Elsewhere worldwide, a number of individuals start to come down with the disease (which leads to seizures, and a fairly quick death).

The US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta send a team (spearheaded by Kate Winslet, aka Dr. Erin Mears (who I am disappointed, did explain a bit the math behind the disease’s epidemiology but doesn’t go as far as developing the actual mathematical model) to check on the cases throughout the US. Mitch Emhoff, Beth’s husband, ends up being immune to the disease, but that doesn’t prevent Beth’s disease from progressing.

With an excellent cast who really take their roles extremely seriously (including a surprisingly convincing Marion Cotillard as a World Health Organization epidemiologist, a Laurence Fishburne that surprises also as the big honcho of the US CDCs, and a lovely Jude Law as the conspiracy theorist blogger who claims to have the cure to the disease), Contagion manages to achieve what Virus and other predecessors don’t: keep you at the edge of your seat and capturing your imagination.

You HAVE to pay attention because the infectious disease’s spread dynamics is so convoluted that it’s semi-impossible to determine who Patient Zero is (though some fingers point out to Beth Emhoff, we late discover that things are all like what we think). Themes of bioterrorism (remember the anthrax scare?) and conspiracy theories are very craftily intertwined with a storyline that seeks to understand the epidemiology of an unknown (and rather deadly) infectious disease.

While it was my good friend N.E. who did her PhD looking at public health interventions of communicable diseases, I have too been fascinated by the mathematical epidemiology of disease transmission, and thus I was completely absorbed by Contagion. There are a couple of scenes that are pretty scary and gory, but for the most part, the suspense is derived from an excellent plot and a lot of realism in the way epidemiological battles are portrayed.

I would very much recommend this movie, and I know that it opens on Friday September 9th, so you should go see it. After you do, I think you may be a little freaked out about anybody who coughs around you, to be quite honest. And it’s kind of creepy in a way that the movie came out so soon after we had the H1N1 pandemic. But I think that there’s value in educating people about the efficacy of public health interventions such as social distancing (an intervention that many argue helped contain both H1N1 and SARS).

I attended the advanced screening of Contagion thanks to media passes given to me and my team, Anabelle and Jessica, who attended as well. I am neither obligated nor expected nor paid for this review. I retain editorial control on all content published on my site.

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