Not sure prophetic is the right word, since epidemics have been with us forever and pandemics seem to roll around every decade or so. It is certainly relevant to the current outbreak.

It is a pity the movie invests so little effort in character development. There is little sense of urgency or drama despite events taking hold so quickly. The subplot regarding the social media influencer seemed especially contrived. And wtf purpose did Law's Australian(?) accent and funky teeth serve? Just weird for weird's sake.

And the dialogue, my word it was stilted. Often felt like really bad improv.

Super relevant. Is a shame isn't a better movie.

Funny and glad someone posted since I think this is super relevant and spot on. I don’t view it as some sort of knock my socks off movie but as said PROPHETIC. NOT sure just because we’ve had a few other epidemics this isn’t relevant but not to this degree. maybe this false panic and social media and media driven panic BS fits this movie to a tee. Less some current stuff in 2020 vs 2011. Couldn’t quite predict exact outcome but sure as hell IMO could say this movie is script for what’s happening today. Less # of deaths but still...I don’t know why more haven’t brought up this movie given what we are seeing now? Watched again tonight. Seen multiple times and love it every time.

Prophetic implies delivering a message, literally from the supernatural, that is unknown to the rest of humanity. In everyday use it means predicting something that cannot be predicted by ordinary means. I don't mean to be critical on a purely semantic basis but most literate people would have been well aware that a Contagion scenario wasn't a question of 'if ' but 'when'. No superpowers or amazing insights required.

Epidemic disaster movies are sufficiently common that they might even be treated as a sub genre all to themselves, even if a lot of them seem to involve zombies for some reason.

So far, the batflu outbreak doesn't look entirely, or even very much, like this movie.

@Jacinto Cupboard said:

So far, the batflu outbreak doesn't look entirely, or even very much, like this movie.

Maybe not, but its getting there at this rate. I saw MANY similarities in this movie to what's happening today.

Well yes and no. In Contagion most of the action takes place over a mere two weeks during which time we have riots, a breakdown in social order, and sport arenas full of dead and dying people. People die quickly. This thing is now 4 months old and on a global scale, and not meaning to make trivial with the issue, but more people have won lotto than have died from this. That might change. What we do know is that the effects, socially, politically and economically, are profound and it will be a long time, if ever, before we return to a world where people are jetting off to faraway parts and taking selfies.

This movie didn't describe a containment/ self isolation phase at all. And unless this thing does turn out like the Spanish Flu with millions of dead, that is what people will remember because it hasn't been done before on this scale. That and a mysterious outbreak of hoarding toilet paper.

As I suggested earlier, many of the things depicted in Contagion can be found in an ordinary Zombie movie. It's not a documentary or a health primer. For example, in Contagion a researcher injects herself with an attenuated virus that might have caused death. This is compared to Barry Marshall drinking a beaker full of the bacteria that causes ulcers. There is no valid comparison. Taking a known bacteria that rarely causes death and is treatable with known antibiotics isn't remotely the same thing as injecting yourself with a potentially lethal virus. The idea that this would mean instantly available vaccines for the public as a result is risible.

I think they modeled the virus and response in the movie on the first SARS outbreak, but made it orders of magnitude (100x) more deadly and contagious... That's why the movie feels so similar to (but several times more extreme than) the current SARS2 pandemic...

@Jacinto Cupboard while i agree that the movie is a dramatisation and exaggeration of what an extremely deadly pandemic would be like, I don't think the movie is that far off from what we would actually do in the real world for such a virus... They haven't done it yet, but nature magazine reported that there is already talk of potentially using "human challenge" trials, where vulunteer participants would be injected with the active virus first, to accelerate the search for a vaccine for the current SARS2 pandemic... so not too far off from the dramatic idea that a lone researcher would take matters into her own hands (hollywood style)...

We're not living in Contagion... The current virus is nowhere near as bad... But I do agree with the OP that it's an excellent movie and fully relevant... Beyond the R0, transmission stuff and differences in labs (e.g.. BSL4), the other aspects are so good... How governments and people in them like Cheever (Fishburn's character) would try to control the narrative through media and have a priviledged position with regards to informatiton, how grifters like that Krumwiede character (Jude Law) would try to take advantage of the misinformation in the public domain... The idea of full lockdowns and not allowing people to get back to life unless they are allocated a vaccine (prove immunity), etc... it's really good... I think the impersonal directing approach, where we're not too invested in character development is usefull, because it keeps the focus on the processes at work, the real subject of the movie...

I think there is some good depiction of science in this movie. There is also some pretty poor stuff. I agree that for the most part there isn't much to quarrel about. I don't really know how people would behave in a scenario like the one in this movie. The general tenor of this movie is that people on the whole would behave pretty badly; in the current crisis, which to be sure is very different, the reverse has been true.

Drama needs to put people central to the story and that requires character development. The quasi documentary feel to this movie, does, I think, borrow from a particular sort of horror/disaster film, and this, along with the lack of human development in the story's main characters diminishes its emotional power. To put it another way the movie sought to deliver an emotional impact thru scenes of gore and violence at the expense of depicting realistic human responses. That, ironically, means a movie closer to a generic disaster movie than an insightful exploration of coping with a pandemic in practical and human ways.

I gave this movie a rating of 5/10, a pass mark from me. So I'm not saying it's bad and don't watch it. But I am saying there are some mistakes in this film, and that we need to be careful not to overlook them. We are witnesses to the first major pandemic in a century. We need to be honest witnesses, and a part of that is to say: 'It wasn't like that at all.'.

Have you guys seen Perfect Sense? It's a pandemic and makes it very personal...

Basically, turning it into a drama about a cook who meets an epidemiologist... and there are running themes of our need to connect with one another at the most basic level... I think that movie is underrated...

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/51999-perfect-sense

Thx for the link. I will put that in my queue.