At the beginning of 2020, a 9-year-old thriller by Steven Soderbergh suddenly surged in popularity. The film featured Hollywood stars in an alarmingly realistic scenario: a novel virus spreads rapidly across the globe, requiring a radical response based on humanity’s faith in science, and each other. Contagion offered a vivid view of life in a pandemic, and when COVID-19 broke out, fans returned to the eerily prescient film. Soderbergh seemed to have predicted the future — but in some ways, things actually became much worse.
In Contagion, scientists race against the clock to combat a new respiratory virus that spreads rapidly from a Hong Kong wet market to the ends of the Earth. Obstacles arise in the form of public panic, anti-science rhetoric, and opportunists exploiting the situation for personal gain. With the help of expert consultants, Soderbergh and his co-writer Scott Z. Burns anticipated much about the Covid-19 pandemic, but its darker realities still surprised them.
This Pulse-Pounding Hollywood Thriller Is Grounded in a Terrifying Reality
Contagion begins with Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returning to Minneapolis from a Hong Kong business trip, unwittingly carrying a novel pathogen that quickly kills her and her young son. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) has no time to grieve as a global health crisis breeds mass hysteria, science denialism, and conspiracy theorists like Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), who makes a quick buck on a bogus cure. Officials from the CDC and WHO race to spread life-saving information, and a vaccine, as the body count rises.
Scott Burns began research for Contagion six months before the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which further influenced the writing process.
Steven Soderbergh’s sobering thriller marked the first time many viewers heard the term “social distancing,” and the reference to a transmission chain involving bats in Chinese wet markets is especially startling for modern viewers. Co-writer Scott Burns told the Washington Post that as the Covid-19 pandemic ramped up, viewers turned to him for advice.
(P)eople from all over the world (asked) how I knew it would involve a bat or how I knew the term “social distancing.” I didn’t have a crystal ball — I had access to great expertise. So, if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence in the public health experts who are out there right now trying to guide us.
While creating their pandemic film, Burns and Soderbergh received abundant advice from medical experts, including officials from the CDC and WHO. Retrospective reviews by science journalists and practitioners have praised Contagion for its realism, despite the critique that only today’s mRNA technology would facilitate such rapid vaccine development. The filmmakers felt that their biggest misses were in underestimating the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and overestimating the intelligence and responsibility of the government.
Related
Now is the perfect time to watch the eerily prescient 2019 version of a David Cronenberg classic, Rabid.
Contagion’s Consultants Were Not Surprised by Covid-19
Contagion was reasonably successful at the box office, but its biggest moment came with the Covid-19 pandemic. The New York Times reported that between December 2019 and March 2020, the film leaped from #270 among Warner Bros.’ catalog titles to #2, beaten only by Harry Potter. Business Insider stated that between December 2019 and January 2020, Contagion experienced a 5,609% increase in piracy activity. In March 2020, the cast teamed with Columbia University for a series of PSAs on pandemic safety.
|
Contagion Takes Hold |
|---|
|
Although the rigorously-researched Contagion is still seen as an uncanny glimpse of the future, Steven Soderbergh told Rue Morgue what the film got wrong. He and Burns didn’t predict the degree to which anti-science conspiracies would move from the fringes to the mainstream, even hamstringing government efforts to protect the public.
We failed to imagine…that (the conspiracy theorist character) would be the President of the United States…that you’d have somebody in a position of power who was actively working against the efforts of the CDC to control the pandemic. It would have seemed too far-fetched to us in 2011.
In various interviews, Soderbergh and Burns have also noted that they didn’t anticipate the influence of social media on future health crises. In 2012, the director referred to the internet as the Wild West, never imagining the degree to which misinformation could go viral — and replace the advice of experts, who would become targets of persecution.
The filmmakers did entertain one concept that wound up on the cutting room floor, but that could become a realistic concern in the near future. They almost linked the novel virus in Contagion to the melting of permafrost, which could uncover animal remains carrying pathogens from another eon. As the effects of climate change intensify, Soderbergh and Burns may feel increasingly haunted by this version of the story that almost was.
Contagion
- Release Date
-
September 8, 2011
- Runtime
-
106 minutes
- Director
-
Steven Soderbergh
Related
This Cult Film Family Keeps Predicting the Future
This family is making visionary movies — literally.
