Movies About Pandemics:
The Coronavirus outbreak has taught us many things. Some of them are bad. Some of them are worse. But what it has taught us that will remain in our hearts and souls forever is that to never underestimate Mother Nature’s ability to retaliate and take back what is rightfully hers. These are some of the movies where she has already done it and she has done it splendidly.
1. I Am Legend
What if Humanity was responsible for its own downfall? Robert Neville is a person who is left all alone in a world that has been devastated by a viral outbreak that took down humanity along with it. The infected become extremely violent creatures with reduced intellect and animal-like behavior called the Dark-Seekers. Only a select few of the human population have the unique genetic make-up that makes them immune to the virus. Robert Neville goes hunting every day, kills these Dark Seekers and captures some to experiment on them in search of a cure. He is also desperate to contact other survivors because the loneliness is killing him. But all hell breaks loose when the Dark Seekers finally band together to kill Neville once and for all.
2. Blindness
A man unexpectedly sees a flash of white light and goes blind. The eye doctor he goes to for a check-up also ends up seeing the same flash of light. He too goes blind as a bat. Sooner all the people who were in close contact with the two blind people go blind them-selves. Later, the folks and the top brass realize that the blindness is being caused by a highly communicable disease related to an unknown mutated version of a virus. Quarantine is issued but the White Sickness or as it is called by the media take the world by a storm. No one is safe since it is easily communicable through air, contact, or exchange of bodily fluids. The entire human society crumbles right before the people, who are going blind one by one.
3. Outbreak
The importance of the movie that was released back in 1995 cannot be stressed more as of now. Outbreak tells the story of how a smuggler brings in an infected female monkey to the United States of America. The monkey bites the smuggler that intended to sell her to the highest bidder. The Smuggler then becomes the human carrier of the virus and the entire disease spreads like the Australian Bushfire. Soon the monkey itself escapes and creates a Pandemic scenario that could spiral out of hand at any point in time. The government is looking to find a cure while some factions within it are busy trying to make a serum that can use as bio-weapon in the art of war.
4. Children of Men
It is the year 2027. The world is in utter shambles. And the virus that caused it is not even deadly when a person is infected with it. It still spells the death knell for human society. The virus targets the reproductive system of a human female, making them infertile. And it is extremely contagious. Slowly and steadily, the entire global population shrinks down to a bare minimum. The only country to have had some semblance of order in the United Kingdom, which has become a police state that has barred the entry of migrants into the country. Julianne Moore plays an Immigrant rights activist named Julian, who convinces her husband Theo, played by Clive Owen, to forge documents for the last known pregnant woman on Earth into Britain.
5. 12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys are as much as a movie about a man trying to stop a viral outbreak as it is about a movie that completely screws up your head with a very twisted “I never saw it coming” ending. In the year 2035, most of humanity has died. A mysterious virus that nobody knows the origins of has killed more than 95 percent of all humans. A convict that was given the death sentence played by Bruce Willis is sent back in time to stop the virus that led to human society crumbling and falling down. When Bruce Willis tries to warn the authorities after he travels back to the past, he is thought to have gone insane and is sent to a mental institution. There he meets Jeffrey Goines (played by Brad Pitt), who might be harboring secrets of his own.
6. Contagion
Out of all the movies on this list, Contagion is the one that resonates the most with the current Coronavirus outbreak situation in real life. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Beth, a woman who is returning from Hong Kong along with her son. She soon falls ill and dies along with her son. The CDC has to race against time to try and find a cure. Mass hysteria and panic lead to rampant looting and people taking the law into their own hands as the Viral Outbreak is rumored to be taking down entire continents on its own. When the CDC finally creates a vaccine, it leads to even more rampage as the people desperately try and fight their way to a cure.
7. Carriers
Carriers is a story of a group of people who are trying to evade the viral outbreak which turned into a global catastrophe. The movie stars Chris Pine and Lou Taylor Pucci as primary protagonists who are trying to lead a group of survivors to a secluded beach hotel they believe will provide them with the shelter and isolation needed to live through as the world is taken down by the virus and the people it infects. But the story is much more than just them trying to make it to the hotel. It explores human behavior and psychology when the members in a group realize that they have lost everything and reaching the hotel is not going to bring everyone back and things will never return back to normal.
8. Train to Busan
Train to Busan is another movie like Carriers. The only difference is that it is a hundred times more intense and it is a foreign language movie and hence will probably skip the watching schedule of many folks out there. In South Korea, there is a sudden outbreak of an unknown but highly dangerous virus that turns infected into rabid beings. An infected person is seen jumping into a train that is carrying hundreds of passengers to the City of Busan. Busan has a quarantine zone that the non-infected people must get into to save themselves from the outbreak. But violent hordes of infected zombie-like humans stand in their way.
9. 28 Days Later
You wake up in a hospital to find that the world is no longer what you thought it would be. An eco-terrorist organization releases a herd of infected chimpanzees into the streets of Great Britain. The Chimpanzees are carrying a deadly virus that can turn humans into zombies. The virus is also very contagious and spreads pretty quickly throughout London. Within 28 days, the entire country of the United Kingdom is taken by storm as a handful of survivors are left with the task of defending themselves against a Zombie Mega Horde. There is also the fact that a certain faction is trying to take advantage of the chaos and use it for their own interests.
10. World War Z
Inspired by the bestselling novel of the same name, World War Z is the story of Gerry Lane, a United Nations investigator who is trying to find the source of a virulent strain that can turn humans into zombies within seconds. No corner of the world is safe. The Virus has taken away everything from human beings. Society is being torn apart little by little. Gerry Lane has the impossible task of traveling across the world trying to figure out the source of the virus and find a possible cure to save the last remnants of humanity from the infected. One scene at the climax of the movie, where Gerry Lane manages to get past the hordes of infected zombies uninfected within a WHO facility in Wales is a breathtaking scene that is intense and flushes you with adrenaline at the same time.
