Trailer Tracking: ‘Drive,’ ‘Contagion,’ ‘Paranormal Activity 3,’ ‘Haywire’

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Movie: “Contagion”

Best Parts of the Trailer: The opening shot of that bridge; the creepy sense of domestic terror (thanks for making us afraid of doorknobs and silverware, Soderbergh!); Matt Damon’s heartbreaking confusion; Gwyneth’s look of horror at 0:43.

Worst Parts of the Trailer: The level of spoilers; that the monkey and the red graphics reminded us of Dustin Hoffman’s “Outbreak”.

Our Take: One of the few things that must suck about being Steven Soderbergh is having to constantly hear other people describe movies as “it’s like ‘Traffic’ for this or that.” Way too often, people struggle to describe “issue” films – i.e. films that show different perspectives on global issues – as “’Traffic’ for immigration”, “’Traffic’ for race relations”, “’Traffic’ for abortion.” Sure, it’s a compliment to how well “Traffic” pulled off the whole parallel narrative thing, but it’s got to get old after a while. And, we’re not helping, because, we’ll admit, it’s hard to watch the trailer for “Contagion” and not think, “Ah, it’s kind of like ‘Traffic’ for contagious diseases.”

But, to be fair, the “Traffic” model is a great one for a movie about an unstoppable global virus. We haven’t really had a great health epidemic movie yet, or at least one that didn’t involve horror or fantastic elements (vampires, zombies, etc). Yes, there was Wolfgang Petersen’s fairly successful 1995 film “Outbreak”, but, c’mon, the movie is extremely dated and isn’t too concerned with reality. (I’m guessing most global health emergencies have moderately fewer helicopter chases.) “Outbreak” gave us some fairly chilling, true information about infections and pathogens and wrapped it around a formulaic thriller plot.

On the other hand, “Contagion”, apparently, is taking a very straight, very real world look at what would happen if a vaccine-proof virus ran amok, and the trailer really sells that sense of reality-based dread. The trailer ping-pongs between showing us the world-wide impact of the crisis with various health agencies running around, trying to come up with a plan, and the personal impact, embodied by Matt Damon trying to deal with the effect of the virus on his family. Damon’s scenes are the most stirring moments in the trailer, particularly one scene regarding the fate of his wife that seems like a fairly major spoiler. Who knows? Perhaps the filmmakers thought that the deaths of some of their A-list cast were obvious, but we’ll have to wait until we see “Contagion” to wonder if the major death shown in the trailer would’ve been more impactful if we hadn’t all known it was coming. (Maybe it was too obvious? Particularly if they were going to show later scenes of Damon on the run alone with his child.)

This has the potential to be a big water cooler movie. The kind of film where people congregate afterwards to discuss things like “can you really get sick from a doorknob?”, “would they really hide the President underground?”, “what would you do to get your family past a quarantine zone?” Laurence Fishburne gets most of the best lines in the trailer, particularly in the exchange where someone asks him if someone could weaponize the bird flu – his response: “The birds are already doing that.”

The one minor quibble we have with the trailer is… part of watching a movie trailer is, consciously or subconsciously, guessing how the movie is going to end. And, with a movie like “Contagion”, there really is only one of two endings – they find a cure or it’s the end of the world. Since we didn’t see anything too Road Warrior-y in the trailer, we’re going to go with that they find a cure. So the trick will be making that ending not seem too obvious and making those final, plague-curing moments have impact and import without making it seem like an after-school special. The last thing we want is for the movie to end with a belabored statement like “And this is why we shouldn’t trust the CDC and should always use Purell. THE END.” Fortunately, with a filmmaker like Soderbergh – who’s like the “Traffic” of film directors – we should be in pretty good hands. Although, given the subject matter, we’d bet than those hands are now freshly scrubbed and frequently disinfected.

TRAILER OUTLOOK: Well done and intriguing. Could be chilling if it finds that perfect balance between domestic thriller and scientific procedural.