Contagio (2009)

Overrated

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

The main characters, Calvin and Iris, have foreign accents that are never explained in that we have no idea where they are from. Their English is atrocious and their pronunciation is bad.The deputy they meet on the trail correctly assumes that the main characters are new to hiking and camping and that they have little clue as to what they are doing. Specifically, Iris is wearing a micro mini- skirt that shows the bottom curvature of her butt cheeks and Calvin is dressed in jeans, a button down shirt, and a driving cap. Clearly, these two naive people are going to meet with a hideous fate while in the woods. The least prepared people are always the first to die in horror films.For those who care, you only have to wait 14 minutes for the first glimpse of bare breasts and a suggested sex scene (we don't get to see any of the action).The injury that Iris sustains would cause her to bleed out rather quickly, yet when we are shown the gaping wound, it isn't even actively bleeding and the the blood looks like purple, partially coagulated blood. Also, she keeps rotating the ankle. With an injury like that, any movement would be excruciatingly painful and she would not be able to or want to move it. In reality, this wound would be free-flowing oxygenated blood and threaten her life. She would also be screaming in pain or passed out from the severity of the pain. Furthermore, Iris is remarkably calm for being so severely injured and alone in the bottom of a pit. Iris is a whiny idiot. She actually thinks that a thin piece of twine can support her weight such that Calvin can pull her out of the pit. Then, when Calvin informs her of her moronic logic, she thinks he is making a jab at her weight when she is very thin, physically fit, and has very little body fat. What an arrogant, conceited airhead!Skip to the 30 minute mark if you want to start the movie when the dramatic tension and crisis are presented. Magically, Iris's wound doesn't hurt until Calvin pours some water on it and bandages it and they have escaped exposure to the poisonous cloud by being underground. Um, excuse me? The gas was wafting along the ground, clearly denser than air and would SINK INTO THE PIT, DUH!Iris's reactions to pain are wimpy and weak at best. When they do manage to get out of the pit, Iris is hardly limping and is able to walk really well for someone whose calf muscle is half missing. Whoever fact-checked this script did NOT do any medically-based research.Ooo, a pile of dead crows covered in ants. So not scary, y'all.Who would the deputy pull a gun on Calvin? He's sick, bleeding from the eyes, and probably can't see all that well. Then, suddenly the deputy is stronger than Calvin and pins Calvin to a tree with a branch? Make up your mind. Either the deputy is weak as a kitten and leaning on a tree trunk for support or he has super-human strength and is going to kill Calvin.Notice how the deputy's hand, although cleft in two, does not bleed. That wound would hemorrhage quickly.Somehow, Calvin and Iris are the world's best hiders-behind-trees. Despite their constant crunching of leaves and twigs underfoot, the guy in a painter's suit sealed with yellow tape (lame and not how real HAZMAT controllers would be dressed at all) and gas mask carrying a machine gun hasn't heard their movements at all. He must have been hard of hearing.So, Calvin is a sharpshooter and fully versed in epidemiology? I don't think so. His character is so utterly boring and unbelievable. We're dealing with a space object that re-entered the Earth's atmosphere with a little extra. Whether it is gas, alien life forms, or something else, Calvin has it all figured out immediately based on seeing one corpse: it enters through the eyes and eats through the brain. Sure, because he's totally a scientist and know-it-all genius. To my shock and surprise, Calvin is proved right when they meet the guy who was hiding in the attic of a house.Gangrene does not set in immediately and the guy in the house CLEARLY heard you say that the gun is empty, Iris. You're so incredibly stupid and annoying!Calvin must be the strongest man alive to take a guy down with two blows of a baseball bat then choke another guy out with the bat. Seriously, these are the worst fight scenes I've ever seen. Whoever choreographed them didn't want to make them seem real at all. Also, the foley artist did not accurately capture the sound a a blow landing.At that close range, that car would have been shot up, all of the glass blown out, all of the tires flattened, and both Calvin and Iris would be super dead. So unbelievable!How can they have run over a person and cut them in half yet there is not a trace of blood anywhere on the pristinely clean white car?The helicopter scenes are clearly stock footage from the Vietnam War and Gulf War. Yup, Calvin is the world's strongest man, because he totally just pulled his own infected head apart at the sagittal suture. Uh-huh, right.Iris is infected and destroys the only source of evidence of what really happened.MOVIE OVER! What was the point of that waste of 90 minutes?