Contagion (2011)
A viral pandemic spreads across the world as medical organizations rush to track it and create a cure.
Genre
Characters/Groups
Japanese Bus Man - Yoshiaki Kobayashi
Dr. Ellis Cheever - Laurence Fishburne
Lorraine Vasquez - Monique Gabriela Curnen
Social Worker - Mary Jo Faraci
Dr. Leonora Orantes - Marion Cotillard
WHO Official - Joseph Anthony Foronda
Paramedic - Phillip James Brannon
Jon Neal's Wife - Rebecca Spence
Minnesota Medical Examiner - David Lively
Assistant Medical Examiner - Andrew White
Jory Emhoff - Anna Jacoby-Heron
Helpful Doctor - Ira Blumen, MD
Minnesota Health 1 - Scott Stangland
Minnesota Health 2 - Jimmy Chung
Minnesota Health 3 - Rick Uecker
Minnesota Health 4 - Tara Mallen
Dr. Ally Hextall - Jennifer Ehle
Dr. David Eisenberg - Demetri Martin
Dr. Ian Sussman - Elliot Gould
Dennis French - Enrico Colantoni
RADM Lyle Haggerty - Bryan Cranston
AIMM Employee 2 - Joshua Weinstein
AIMM Employee 3 - Sarah Charipar
Japanese Official - Hee-Wan Kwon
Sussman's Assistant - Blair Robertson
Hedge Fund Man in Park - Randy Lowell
Chinese Health Official 1 - Kwok Wah-Wong
Chinese Health Official 2 - Sau Ming Raymond Tsang
Funeral Director - Jim Ortlieb
Beth's Mother - Annabel Armour
Elizabeth Nygaard - Kara Zediker
National Guardsman - Peter A Kelly
Shivering Man - Jason Babinsky
Sanjay Gupta, MD - Sanjay Gupta
Man with Megaphone - Thomas Gebbia
Hextall's Father - Dan Flannery
Home Invasion Thug - Dan Sanders-Joyce
Character thumbnails with links to profiles
Detailed Synopsis
On Day 2, Beth Emhoff is waiting to board her flight home as she coughs. She receives a phone call from Jon Neal who calls her and says it was nice seeing her after mentioning meeting with her to have sex earlier and reminds her to use an alternate email address of his to communicate with him. Her flight is called and she hands her credit card to the waitress to close out her tab after ending the call with Jon. In Kowloon, Hong Kong, Li Fai is riding a boat home and showing symptoms of suffering from a fever. He then takes a subway home and sits down on the couch next to Li Fai's Sister, who seems concerned about his condition. In London, England, Irina is also showing signs of a fever. She returns to work and drops off a portfolio before taking a taxi home where she is found by a maid having suffered a seizure. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Beth signs paperwork dealing with a construction project and returns home where she is greeted by Clark Morrow and Mitch Emhoff. A Japanese Bus Man exits a plane lavatory and looks at paperwork from AIMM Anderson. As he is riding a bus in Tokyo, Japan, he suddenly collapses. Li Fai's condition continues to deteriorate and he rides an elevator with a family and walks out to the market area. He starts to get tunnel vision and walks out into the middle of the street and is hit by a truck.
On Day 3, Dr. Ellis Cheever arrives for work in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He passes by Roger and tells him he did a good job picking the winners in the football betting pool. Roger asks Dr. Cheever if he could diagnose his son, Anthony with having ADHD, but Dr. Cheever tells him he isn't that kind of doctor, but could refer him to someone. In San Francisco, California, Alan Krumwiede shares a video on his blog of a phone recording a passenger took when the Japanese Bus Man collapsed. He then shows the video to Lorraine Vasquez and tells her it could be from mercury poisoning in the fish which the fishing industry suppresses. She tells him she will show it to their health reporter Hobart and Alan gets upset and threatens to sue the paper if they steal his story. Mitch goes to Clark's school to pick him up and the School Nurse walks Clark over to Mitch and tells Mitch, Clark was complaining about feeling warm. She tells Mitch she took Clark's temperature and it was over 100 degrees.
On Day 4, Beth is starting to experience tunnel vision. She drops her coffee cup and then collapses and starts suffering from a seizure. Mitch takes Beth to the hospital. Dr. Arrington talks to Beth as ER Nurse 1 asks Mitch if Beth has any history of seizures. Beth starts to Code Blue and ER Nurse 2 tells Mitch he has to leave the room. Later Dr. Arrington along with a Social Worker tell Mitch that Beth died. Mitch at first refuses to believe it and then starts to demand to know how Beth died. As he is returning home, Mitch receives a call from Carrie Anne and he tells her to hang up and call 911. Mitch gets home and Carrie Anne tells him Clark said his head hurt so she sent him to bed. Mitch runs upstairs and finds Clark dead.
On Day 5, in Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. Leonora Orantes arrives at the World Health Organization. Damian Leopold updates her that the Chinese Government is saying an outbreak has been contained to the Chrysanthemum complex in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Li Fai's Sister returns home to the Guangdong Province in China with his ashes. She is later found by a bus worker dead on the bus. A WHO Official asks Damian how the Chinese are defining contained. Dr. Orantes then warns them that due to the nature of Hong Kong, the virus will spread. Dr. Orantes mentions two outbreak clusters in London, a cluster in Tokyo and the WHO Official asks if any of the dead in Tokyo traveled to London or China. A Paramedic takes Jon Neal away in a stretcher as Jon Neal's Wife watches and tells Paramedic that both her and Jon woke up sick that morning and she is brought along into the ambulance. The Minnesota Medical Examiner and Assistant Medical Examiner perform an autopsy on Beth and the Minnesota Medical Examiner notices Beth's brain has some severe damage and tells the Assistant Medical Examiner to start calling everyone after telling him to step away from Beth's remains.
On Day 6, Dr. Erin Mears arrives at the CDC and they start to discuss the outbreak in Minneapolis. Dr. Mears arrives in Minneapolis and meets Dave and they get started immediately. Jory Emhoff arrives at the hospital after being dropped off by the Minnesota Department of Health. Helpful Doctor tells her, Mitch is in isolation, but she can talk to him with a phone. They talk and he reassures her that he is okay and he suggests she stay with her mother in Wisconsin, but she refuses. At the Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota Health 1 tells the group there are 47 cases and 9 deaths as of current, but Minnesota Health 2 warns that the death and infection rate might be low due to it being the weekend and people are staying home. Dr. Mears brings up the terms fomites and after Minnesota Health 3 asks her to define it, she explains, fomites are transmission from surfaces. Minnesota Health 4 doesn't want to release information to the press due to how the public might react. She brings up the time people were warned about Swine Flu and how it did nothing but scare people and reminds everyone that it is the largest shopping season of the year. Minnesota Health 2 suggests they close down schools, but Minnesota Health 4 says then people won't be able to work at the stores and have to stay home with their kids. Dr. Mears goes to the dry erase board and writes down the Flu, Smallpox, and Polio with the numbers 1, 3 and 4/6 for each respectively. She explains the numbers represent the R-nought or the reproductive rate of the virus. At the CDC in Georgia, Dr. Ally Hextall and Dr. David Eisenberg are in the Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory examining a sample of Beth's tissue. Dr. Eisenberg asks how Dr. Hextall's Thanksgiving went and she tells him she working on a case in Texas dealing with a Salmonella outbreak. Dr. Hextall tells Dr. Eisenberg the virus is pleomorphic but tends towards ovoid in shape with glycoproteins on its surface. She then tells Dr. Eisenberg to send the sample to Dr. Ian Sussman in San Francisco. Dr. Sussman reports the virus shows novel characteristics and appears to be chimeric in origin with 15 to 19 kilobases in length and six to ten genes typical of paramyxovirus. Alan runs up to Dr. Sussman with a mini recorder and asks him if the virus was created by the military and tells Dr. Sussman there is talk on the blogosphere the virus is a biological weapon.
On Day 7, at the CDC, Dennis French walks up to Dr. Cheever and asks him to come with him to the emergency operations center to meet with RADM Lyle Haggerty. French hands out photographs of the quarantine in Kowloon and talks about strikes in Macao where three people have died that lived in the same bunkhouse. French says Homeland Security's concern is a terrorist contracting the virus on purpose to use it as a terror weapon. Dr. Cheever asks what the three casino workers died of and it matches that of the victims in Minnesota.