WE’VE REVIEWED MOVIES about viral outbreaks and epidemics before, like “Contagion” and “Outbreak”, here now are two more that you can check out as they’re most certainly very timely.
CARRIERS (2009) - In this movie, a deadly virus has already spread the world over, like what is happening now. No one is safe and no one can be trusted even if you practice social distancing.
Contagion is prevalent and, in the American West, four friends travel through the backroads to get to a hidden beach in the Gulf of Mexico where they can be safe from the pandemic.
But the best laid plans often don’t happen the way we envision it.
Their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and more problems occur. The boys are Chris Pine as Brian and Lou Taylor Pucci as his brother Danny.
The girls are Piper Perabo as Bobby, Brian’s girlfriend, and Emily Van Camp (of the TV series “Revenge”) as Danny’s high school friend.
Their first problem comes from other survivors who are competing with them for dwindling fuel and food supplies.
Armed with guns, bottles of bleach, gloves and face masks, the four protagonists struggle to keep their enemies away, both virus and human, and they have to face life or death decisions.
The movie has many suspenseful scenes and it addresses the kill or be killed situations faced by the characters with some degree of sympathy and understanding, amidst all the doom and gloom.
After watching it, we can only pray very hard that what happened to the characters, who are driven to extreme measures, and the way that the movie ended, will not happen to us in real life as it’s truly morbidly scary and utterly frightening.
VIRUS (2019) - This is an Indian film based on the real life outbreak of the Nipah virus in Kerala, India in 2018 that killed 17 people. A man brought to a hospital dies from an unknown virus and soon, people who came into contact with him also got sick.
For the next five weeks, doctors risk their own lives as they search for an antidote or cure, try to contain it so it won’t spread, and also cope with the public paranoia caused by fear.
This movie shows you the experiences and emotions that the characters went through and which we are all going through right now.
You can feel the uneasiness and the dread of those afflicted with the virus and the sense of hope on the part of the health workers who are fighting the virus that is spreading too fast. The core of the narrative is the mystery surrounding the virus and the scientists who are running against time to combat it.
The process of contact tracking, the key to containing the virus, is used effectively to sustain the suspense until the end.
This shows that their government is functioning effectively during the crisis. But what they experienced is really nothing to what the entire world is going through right now.
