Contagion (2011) [4K UHD Review]

Contagion is a vicious departure from the tired pandemic pablum we’ve been force-fed for decades into the gaping maw of our rapidly-decaying cultural landfill. It slams you in the face like an unexpected glob of phlegm from an infected rando on a crowded bus. No wonder it started blowing up the iTunes charts when a real world pandemic hit in 2020.

Romero for the Real World

Instead of leaning into cheap shocks and Romero-esque scenarios of urban bedlam, Contagion creeps under your skin with a bone-chilling plausibility. The scariest moments aren’t when CGI hordes are rampaging, but rather the quiet human dramas that play out amidst the global meltdown. Watching Gwyneth Paltrow’s ramped-up Goop-Bot start spontaneously leaking viscous fluids from every orifice made my bowels loosen in primal fear. When was the last time a movie made you want to seal yourself in a biodome for your own safety?

The brilliant script by Scott Z. Burns brings the unsettling realism, tracing the origins and inexorable spread of the virus across multiple storylines in a clinical yet gripping fashion. Matt Damon carries the emotional core as the prototypical American suburban dad watching his quaint existence crumble before his reddened eyes. His measured implosion as the world descends into chaos is a masterclass in internalized angst that makes Jack Nicholson’s meltdown in The Shining look like a children’s puppet show.

On the other side of the panic is an amazing Jennifer Ehle as a virologist trying to construct a cure, matching wits with a diabolical microbe seemingly designed to turn humans into sentient buckets of slime. Her increasingly fraught journey deep into the medical abyss is like the darkest Fantastic Voyage imaginable. I was squirming in my theater seat, waiting for some rogue strand of virus to burrow into her eyeball.

A Soderbergh for the People

Soderbergh orchestrates the whole shebang with a surgeon’s precise hand, crimping down the dread like a vise around your junk with each mounting revelation. Longtime fans will spot his trademark chilly aesthetic that made films like Traffic and the Oceans flicks such tantalizing visual treats. But here that clinical detachment takes on a sickening new dimension, like you’re watching events unfold through the unblinking lens of a sociopathic alien observer.

The whole momentum builds toward a climax ripped straight from the blackest pits of your subconscious fears. No spoilers, but let’s just say it involves a burned-out wreck of a dude gamely trying to procure a last big score in the middle of a hellscape out of one of Hieronymus Bosch’s worst fever dreams. I half-expected the screen to start melting and oozing torrents of virulent green slime to infect us all.

Doomsday viral movies

At its core, Contagion isn’t just a doomsday sicko flick to get your heart racing. It’s a searing indictment of the fragility of our modern world construct, where one little hiccup can send the whole rickety tower of babbleonian lies crashing down in a cataclysmic shower of rubble and pus. This makes the paranoid nightmares of ropy-haired loons like Oliver Stone seem practically quaint by comparison.

So if you’re feeling brave enough to confront one of the most unsettling visions of societal collapse this side of a documentary about Octomom, punch your inoculation ticket for Contagion. The end may already be nearer than you think! Just be prepared to fiend for a hefty dose of high-octane disinfectant by the time the credits roll. This is subversive, scabrous, celluloid sickness of the rarest and most virulent strain – a super-bug of shock that’ll have you huddled under the covers, struggling to breathe through the cold sweats of existential horror. Better get your shots now, vault-dwellers!

Contagion comes to 4K UHD for the first time

Warner Brothers has always done right by their recent catalog for me. So, it’s not a shock that I appreciate their 4K UHD release of Contagion. However, I don’t know if I care for the reframing of the movie. It’s not meant to be so open matte, but at the same time the difference in the ratio from flat to open is so tiny that it really shouldn’t bother me. I mean, it’s not like James Cameron slapped so much digital smooth on it that the Predator Ultimate Edition gained sentience and told ’em to chill out.

Seriously, I never thought I would live in the era of film transfers getting Botox, but here we are. The special features are virtually ported over from the DVD and Blu-ray. Nothing here is that out of the blue. Hell, Soderbergh could get a commentary on here at least. But, he’s making short films with Staavy and doing what an indie maverick does during the decline of American cinema. Still, the movie looks great and serves as an Andromeda Strain for people who wash their hands too much.

Contagion is now on 4K UHD. Buy a copy at MovieZyng!