Acting is AWFUL! All I can say is if I got hurt you'd hear me screaming at the top of my lungs. And as for him, he'd be screaming my name as if he really cared about me. Her crying makes me want to stuff my ears with cotton. Friggin irritating. I actually wasted 30 minutes of my life watching this. I didn't or could even get to the contagious part of the movie. It was sooooo bad.
4 Reviews
Backyard Production
tolta9 October 2018
Slow. Just slow. The "action" is a step below middle school plays and the "acting" is non-existent. The gore is not, except for the very end, and that is just laughable. Save yourself time, watch the last 5 mins and when you are done laughing you will understand how the rest of the movie went. Trust me, skipping to the end will only benefit you.
Lame Movie with Horrendous Acting that Clearly Was Not Fact-Checked
mariajonasfahlsing5 July 2014
Warning: Spoilers
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?
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?
Bloody
BandSAboutMovies6 March 2024
Warning: Spoilers
Directed and written by Steve Sessions (Aberrations, Dead Clowns), Contagio starts with Calvin (Luc Bernier) and Iris (Isabelle Stephen) going on a camping weekend vacation and then entering a nightmare, as they soon learn that the area that they're in has seen people going insane.
Filmed in less than a week during the beginning of March 2009, this is the kind of movie that references The Incubus (the car that Calvin and Iris steal has the same license plate as Cassavettes' car), The Crazies and Night of the Demon (the sheriff's name is from that film). I'm kind of surprised by the level of people not liking this movie on IMDB and Letterboxd, because it has some great effects - I mean, a man literally pulls his own head in half and everything inside messily vomits out - and is obviously made with no budget at all. Sure, Calvin and Iris are both morons - I judged him as soon as he wore that driving hat and wondered how he was able to have such an attractive partner - but what horror movie leads are all that smart anyway?
Yes, I also get that the leg wound that Iris gets would leave her unable to walk. Yes, the footage of the helicopters is obviously stock and doesn't feel like it fits where the movie takes place. Yes, Calvin may be a complete moron until he suddenly is an expert in science and figures out that there's a cloud that goes into people's eyes and makes them into infected killers.
That said, I had fun. Sometimes, you can just watch something and shut your brain off, you know?
Filmed in less than a week during the beginning of March 2009, this is the kind of movie that references The Incubus (the car that Calvin and Iris steal has the same license plate as Cassavettes' car), The Crazies and Night of the Demon (the sheriff's name is from that film). I'm kind of surprised by the level of people not liking this movie on IMDB and Letterboxd, because it has some great effects - I mean, a man literally pulls his own head in half and everything inside messily vomits out - and is obviously made with no budget at all. Sure, Calvin and Iris are both morons - I judged him as soon as he wore that driving hat and wondered how he was able to have such an attractive partner - but what horror movie leads are all that smart anyway?
Yes, I also get that the leg wound that Iris gets would leave her unable to walk. Yes, the footage of the helicopters is obviously stock and doesn't feel like it fits where the movie takes place. Yes, Calvin may be a complete moron until he suddenly is an expert in science and figures out that there's a cloud that goes into people's eyes and makes them into infected killers.
That said, I had fun. Sometimes, you can just watch something and shut your brain off, you know?
See also
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