One of the scariest movies of my lifetime is one I didn't even see at first. It was the Fall of 1983, right in the gut of Reagan-era Cold War paranoia and ABC decided it was time to play on everyone's #1 fear, nuclear war (the Pac-Man fever epidemic being #2). When The Day After premiered it did so behind a genius marketing campaign that warned parents to keep their children away. The network set up a 1-800 number for worried viewers to call. They played the second half of the movie commercial free. And, most unbelievably of all, they aired an actual intellectual discussion after the film featuring none other than Carl Sagan and William F. Buckley. They weren't messing around. I remember hearing about it on the school bus the next day from a friend whose parents didn't seem to care about his fragile young psyche. And then I forgot about it until the day, years later, when I caught a re-airing on cable. And damn if I wasn't grateful for having avoided a childhood full of nightmares.
The key to good horror--and really that's what this was--is the feeling of helplessness instilled in the viewer. What can we possibly do if our leaders decide to start throwing missiles at each other? As rhetorical as that sounds, I'll still answer to stress my point: Nothing. We can't do anything to stop the bombs from falling or to reason with a great white shark or hide form deadly virus. The key to good horror is to make us realize how weak and human we really are. The Day After was successful by showing how easily normal, middle American life can be reduced to ashes. Despite it being such a politically-charged issue, there really was no political agenda behind the film itself. It said, this is what would happen, and really there was no spinning that reality. It was frightening in how low key and stark the presentation was. You thought, uh, yeah, this could actually happen.
Viruses can happen, too. They have. Worldwide pandemics are part of our history and, as cyclically ignorant as we would like to pretend to be, they will be part of our future. So, it's odd that there have not been many cinematic attempts to capture the terror of a global outbreak in a realistic, non-zombie way. Well, there was Outbreak (1995), of course, although all I really remember about that was it starred Dustin Hoffman and monkey who later was on Friends (that was the same monkey, right?). That was the height of the Ebola virus, which we were told was going to kill us all. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't. But the fact that the movie itself was not very memorable even though it tackled a timely legitimate real world fear came to mind as I watched Steven Soderbergh's updated (though monkey-free) version, Contagion.
Contagion is a well made film. It's directed by Steven Soderbergh and has an all-star cast of quality actors (and as I've said before, Matt Damon is at the top of his game right now, the kind of actor whose presence alone makes movies better). But...there's something missing. The idea of a quickly-spreading deadly virus is terrifying, but that threat never felt immediate. The number of victims in this movie is staggering, yet the impact never hit home. I'm not sure if it was because they try to spread the drama too wide (I still don't understand Marion Cotillard's storyline other than she was not on screen nearly enough) or if the action moved too fast. Something stopped it from connecting on that visceral level that movies like this need to work. I certainly didn't dislike this movie, but I can't help but wonder what the point was. Here's the virus, here's what happens, here's the cure, the end. It's all very clinical. I'd say it needed more heart, but I don't want this to start sounding like a hack sports column. MINUS
