THE poster shows three young people standing. They have their masks on. It is 2009 and the film is Carriers. After watching it, where did you go? Maybe, you had a lovely dinner, or post-movie cocktails. Then you talked with friends about the merits of the film and thanked your god that it was not happening in reality.
But the plot of Carriers is now with us through this film that has terrifically imagined for us the same dark future.
The story begins with a virus. It is spreading fast and worldwide and killing population after population. Two brothers, Brian and Danny, are looking for refuge. They are looking to their vacation home and the brothers bring with them a friend and one of the brother’s girlfriend.
Other people are also looking for places where they could be saved. One of them is a man who is with his daughter who happens to be infected by the virus. First, the group tries to run away from the father and daughter but an incident brings them together. The father also knows of a place where supposedly a serum that would provide an antidote to the virus exists.
During their escape, one of the two brothers realizes he is infected with the virus.
In 1999, a film about a medical nightmare on a global level was released. It is a “medical disaster film.” Its title? Outbreak.
Directed by an important filmmaker, Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire), Outbreak opens in an African jungle, in 1967, where a virus that causes a very deadly fever has infected a camp, which is then destroyed.
Some 28 years later, an American virologist travels to another African state to investigate the spread of a virus.
In another event, a capuchin monkey, a favorite pet and the host of the virus, is brought into the country. The virus spreads from one person to another. The virus also mutates into an infection that comes across as flu. The army and the laboratories know that the capuchin monkey is the source of the virus. The next move from the Army is to quarantine an area and martial rule is imposed.
The government knows all this time about the virus. Welcome to the world of conspiracy theories, of a government aiming to use the virus as part of biological warfare.
Outbreak stars Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland, and costars Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey. The sterling cast could be the reason for its success in the box-office. Looking back, fiction is indeed stranger than fact, and that science and fiction can really work together. From Zaire in Africa to California in the United States as the distance with which a virus can travel is preposterous then, but not now.
The film has prepared us for concepts of quarantine, mutations, and the different ways by which the government controls the population to give people a sense that something is being done about the epidemic. Simultaneous with the release of the film was the outbreak of the Ebola virus somewhere in Zaire.
Another film hits closer to home. Released in 2011, Contagion maximizes the terror of how one can be contaminated by a single touch through a multiple narrative commonly attributed to the directorial style of Steven Soderbergh.
The story begins with a woman returning from Hong Kong, arriving in the US and stopping in Chicago. There, she has a tryst with her lover. Back in her home, this woman has a seizure. The husband brings her to the hospital where she dies from an unknown virus. The husband goes home to find that his stepson has also been infected and dies. The husband is left with his daughter and they are quarantined in their own home.
In another state, members of the Department of Homeland Security meet with the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they talk about this unknown disease that is spreading. Is it being caused by a virus that has been transformed into a bioweapon? The center assigns a woman in charge of epidemic intelligence to probe the phenomenon. This officer begins her investigation by tracking down individuals who had contact with the woman who died. In the process of getting down to the bottom of things, she experiences hostile responses from local bureaucrats. The virus then spreads and become a full-blown epidemic. Cities are placed under quarantine as looting and other violent acts erupt.
The next task is to find a vaccine to fight the virus. Scientists, however, have difficulties in coming up with a cell culture from which they can grow the newly identified—novel—virus. The scientists are sure of one thing at this point: the virus is spread via respiratory droplets and objects like clothes and utensils, those things which are used and touched by people.
The horror is yet to come: scientists in the film warn that in the mutation of the virus, it is projected that “one out of 12 of the world population” will be infected and the mortality rate will be significant.
A flashback assaults us showing how and where it all begins. The company in which that woman works for is shown clearing a rainforest in China. The operation disturbs the bats in the area. One of the bats flies to a pig farm and drops a piece of banana, which is then eaten by a pig. That pig is butchered and is made into a cuisine by a Macau chef. Without washing his hands, the chef shakes the hand of the woman who gets infected via that brief touch.
The stellar cast of Contagion, includes Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet.
It has been written that its writer, Scott Z. Burns, had consultations with the World Health Organization and other recognized health experts. The result is this film praised by critics and the scientific community, and scary for being so prescient.