"An invisible monster is on the loose, and it's coming for everyone."
Infection is creepily scary, so I was glad to see an episode of this series focus on it.
"Contagion" -- "Nothing spreads like fear," of 2011, was as gripping as it was prescient, so I wasn't surprised to see it excerpted here. It foresees some of the preoccupations of 2020-21 -- as scientist Kate Winslett notes, "The average person touches their face 2,000 to 3,000 times a day."
I was a little chagrinned that a granddaddy of the genre didn't make it into the lineup -- "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) with Vincent Price, a film that hasn't lost its power over the decades.
This episode rightly cites the compelling but poorly edited "The Andromeda Strain," about "a virus from space -- something we have no immunity against."
And it mentions a number of films I hadn't heard of, but have added to my to-view list:
* 2020's "The Color Out of Space," featuring "a classically unhinged performance by Nick Cage."
* "Rec" (2007), a found-footage film from Spain about a spreading ailment, and "all the weapons of mankind are helpless before it."
* "Twelve Monkeys" (1995), inspired, surprisingly, by the grim, odd 1962 short "La Jetée" (1962).
* Then there's David Cronenberg's "Shivers" of 1975, in which "a parasite turns mild-mannered Canadians into sex fiends"..."You have to have a plague to make you do something as wrong as having sex out of wedlock." Actor Bill Hader deems the end of the movie "really disturbing."
These films drive home the reality of death "as the great leveler," a commentator notes -- "an experience common to everyone who has ever lived and who will ever live."
Infection is creepily scary, so I was glad to see an episode of this series focus on it.
"Contagion" -- "Nothing spreads like fear," of 2011, was as gripping as it was prescient, so I wasn't surprised to see it excerpted here. It foresees some of the preoccupations of 2020-21 -- as scientist Kate Winslett notes, "The average person touches their face 2,000 to 3,000 times a day."
I was a little chagrinned that a granddaddy of the genre didn't make it into the lineup -- "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) with Vincent Price, a film that hasn't lost its power over the decades.
This episode rightly cites the compelling but poorly edited "The Andromeda Strain," about "a virus from space -- something we have no immunity against."
And it mentions a number of films I hadn't heard of, but have added to my to-view list:
* 2020's "The Color Out of Space," featuring "a classically unhinged performance by Nick Cage."
* "Rec" (2007), a found-footage film from Spain about a spreading ailment, and "all the weapons of mankind are helpless before it."
* "Twelve Monkeys" (1995), inspired, surprisingly, by the grim, odd 1962 short "La Jetée" (1962).
* Then there's David Cronenberg's "Shivers" of 1975, in which "a parasite turns mild-mannered Canadians into sex fiends"..."You have to have a plague to make you do something as wrong as having sex out of wedlock." Actor Bill Hader deems the end of the movie "really disturbing."
These films drive home the reality of death "as the great leveler," a commentator notes -- "an experience common to everyone who has ever lived and who will ever live."
