Contagion Movie Review

A few weeks ago I went to see the movie Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. The movie details a worldwide unidentified virus that kills millions and spreads rapidly. I wanted to see this film because it is entirely plausible that something like this could happen in our interconnected world.

According to imdb.com, Steven Soderbergh's two most successful films are Erin Brokovich and Traffic,  both released in 2000. These two films earned him twin nominations for Best Picture at the Academy Awards; Traffic took home the Oscar. Contagion is a great movie to add onto Soderbergh's list of well-crafted dramas. It is a thriller detailing the spread of a lethal airborne virus and the frantic efforts of the CDC to locate its origin and, most importantly, develop a vaccine. The film's tagline is "Nothing spreads like fear." Though the movie was somewhat slow-moving, it built up a little fear in me as I realized that the surfaces we touch and the air we breathe are teeming with germs.


Contagion is similar to Soderbergh's earlier film Erin Brokovich in that both of them involve serious health threats. Erin Brokovich is the true story of a legal assistant who brings justice to the people of a small town who are being sickened by their polluted drinking water. Contagion is also similar to this film because both feature strong female main characters; Julia Roberts is the star in Erin Brokovich, and Kate Winslet has a prominent role in Contagion as a CDC medic who attempts to track down all individuals who may have been exposed to the virus. However, Contagion is in an entirely different arena of films than Erin Brokovich. Contagion is definitely more of a thriller.


This film reflects a possible ramification of our society's interconnectedness. The huge amount of people who die from the virus is only possible because people are so mobile now and interact with many people throughout the day. This film also reflects a trend in our culture with regards to health scares. The bird flu and the swine flu caused mass panic, and turned out to be not as dangerous as we thought. People will always be scared of something like this happening, and Contagion shows that if it did occur there would be chaos. I think everybody is the target audience for this film because health is something that every person values and tries to protect.


A strength in this movie is the acting, and the multiple plot lines. One aspect of the film follows Kate Winslet's character as she tries to locate infected people, another focuses on Matt Damon's character and his daughter as they hole up in their house waiting for the epidemic to pass, and also the CDC's attempts to trace the virus' origins. There is also a plot line in which Jude Law believes he has found the cure, and misleads people into believing him. Unfortunately, a glaring weakness in this movie was that it just fell flat for me. I think it had the potential to be far more involved and produce an edge-of-your-seat reaction. I would have liked to have seen more detail given to the chaos that forms when there is a mass panic and people make a run on stores for supplies. Overall, this film was medium for me. I enjoyed it and it made me think about what would happen if this occurred in real life, but it could have used more excitement.


Robert Ebert gave Contagion 3 stars and felt that it succeeded in developing the scientific aspects of the film; I agree with him. While this film does make you think twice about shaking a stranger's hand, I don't think it will be remembered as an epic blockbuster. This is not Steven Soderbergh's best film, but it does showcase his talent as a director in the thriller and drama genres.


Beyond writing this blog post I engaged with this subject by looking up the Spanish flu, which is mentioned in the film. Contagion is a film that I would recommend to friends because it's entertaining and shows how a single instance of infection can spread worldwide and kill millions. By doing this critique I learned how to delve deeper into a film and really see what I liked and didn't like about it,  without giving away major plot twists.

"If You Don't Have an iPhone...."

Topic #1-Advertising: iPhone 4 Commercial

I found this commercial on YouTube for the iPhone 4, originally uploaded in March. I had seen it on TV many times and like some other apple commercials, it stuck in my head. There are no characters in this ad, only a hand holding the iPhone and showing all of the amazing things it can do. The music is a nondescript background song. The ad focuses on the huge app store available to iPhone users. It shows that with an iPhone you can store a mobile boarding pass or Starbucks card (which can be conveniently scanned right from the phone.) Apple tells us what awesome features an iPhone has by telling us that without an iPhone, you cannot do these things.

Apple is definitely employing the band-wagon approach to advertising in this ad. Their message in this commercial is that "if you don't have an iPhone, well, you don't have an iPhone." This leads people to believe that without an iPhone they may be left out of the growing circle of people that do have an iPhone. If they don't have an iPhone, they won't have access to all of the apps that their friends have (1 billion apps and growing have been downloaded) and thus they'll be excluded from a special community. I myself thought this ad was a little silly and did not make me want to buy an iPhone, but I still thought it was creative and made good use of demonstrating the technology that the iPhone 4 has. 

My interpretation of this ad is that people always want to feel included, and the band-wagon approach in this commercial speaks to that. While the message of "keeping up with the Jones'" is nothing new, I think that Apple is the best marketer of that idea. This ad does use the association principle because it connects having an iPhone to having an image of being cool, modern, and technologically savvy. As a brand, Apple has always marketed the idea that if you use Apple products you are in some way "cooler" than people who don't. I think many consumers of Apple products are proud of this image and see themselves as having superior tastes to non-apple users. I feel that this ad targets college students, young adults and professionals. According to Alwaysonmessage.com 52% of people ages 18-29  and 45% of people ages 30-49 own an iPhone. I don't think this ad includes stereotypes necessarily, it just tries to convince the viewer that people who don't have an iPhone are less "with it" than people who do have one.

This ad is definitely memorable. Apple has three commercials in total sporting the "if you don't have an iPhone" tagline. The campaign sticks in my mind because I think many of the features detailed in the ads are available on other phones and the tagline seems a little ridiculous to me. I don't have an iPhone and these ads didn't make me want to run out and buy one because i feel left out or envious of iPhone users. I have looked at iPhones and think they are really cool, but simply cannot afford a phone like that. I don't feel bad about not having an iPhone though. With regards to the target audience, I think the ad did a good job because it speaks to the fact that people want to feel included and keep up with the latest technological gadgets. The ad succeeded in making me want to check out the iPhone and other apple products further. Bottom line for me personally is that the iPhone is just too expensive.

From doing this assignment I learned how to analyze an ad and look deeper into its message. I might just be doing this with every commercial I see! My conclusion is that Apple uses a lot of band-wagon marketing for its products. This iPhone 4 commercial is a good example of that. It encourages people to at least check out what the iPhone has to offer and hopes that maybe they will decide that it's better than other smartphones.