Ready or not, here comes pandemic cinema

 And the beginning of the unavoidable coronavirus cinema has begun. As disaster cinema became the new hot thing after the attacks on 9/11, we can now expect a new level of unprecedented pandemic cinema to now overcome our… I would say cinemas, but it is more likely to be our streaming devices in the wake of the topsy turvy world that is still in the process of being molded and formed.

While the disaster film genre has roots that date back to the beginning of motion picture and had a popular spree in the 1970s with films like the Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, Osama Bin Laden’s organized plane attacks, specifically those that hit the Twin Towers, made these blockbuster spectacles a surreal, tragic reality that led to a genre revival. Roland Emmerich’s big budget disaster film Independence Day set the tone for what was to come, and, being mad in 1996, even predated 9/11. After destroying the white house in the extraterrestrial demolition flick, Emmerich would go on to creatively demolish the rest of the world's monuments and tourist attractions after his breed of cinema unfolded before our eyes in September of 2001.

Other directors, like Paul Greengrass with United 93, went for a more dramatic, realistic effect in contrast to the bombastic, fantastical, CGI ridden productions of Emmerich and company. United 93 is an astonishingly realistic depiction of one of the planes, perhaps destined for the white house itself, that went down before reaching its final destination. Greengrass used a documentary aesthetic and more or less unknown actors mixed in with some characters actually playing themselves to give the film its devastating real life feeling. Other films like World Trade Center would try to replicate its success, and then there are other films about different world disasters such as B.A. Bayona’s The Impossible about the tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004. 

We can now expect the coronavirus to have a similar effect, for better or worse, on the current world pop culture. For now no film has been made specifically about the pandemic, though it is hard to imagine any film doing a better job at recreating the paranoia, uncertainty, and novelty of a globalized yet individualistic world suddenly having to work together and cooperate on a scale never before seen, as Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion. When Soderbergh’s film was released I was impressed by the realistic depiction of the bureaucracy that would go into understanding, confining, controlling, and ultimately curing a new, super contagious, deadly disease. Thankfully the coronavirus was not as destructive as the fictional virus that begins to quickly wipe out mankind in the star studded drama. Soderbergh is an expert ensemble director, and miraculously he is the only one who seems to really shine in a film that features Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Lawrence Fishburn, Gwenyth Paltrow. The actors are doing their little part in a film that is much bigger than any single one of them. Instead of focusing on a few protagonists, Soderbergh shows us the big picture, taking us from individual, normal people, into laboratories, hospitals, and government offices. Instead of focusing in on the president as Emmerich would do, Soderbergh focuses on the people who are really working on how to try and control and defeat the virus, the nameless people that we never see on a news cycle dominated by heads of state, some doing a better job than others, from the Donald Trumps and Jair Bolsonaros to the Jacinda Ardens and the Moon Jae-ins.

While in hindsight some of Soderbergh’s film feels too simplistic, such as the sudden, almost miraculous, depiction of the world saving vaccine, to the unfocused unrest in the streets, it is amazing to see how much of it is almost bang on, and the vaccine lottery system seems like a fine idea for a virus that is deadly to the entire population. I’m sure there will be those who try to bring the reality of living with the coronavirus in 2020 to life, but few will be capable of matching the style and cool calculation of Soderbergh’s seemingly prophetic film. 

As cinema is the art that best represents the actuality of our modern times, at least in a superficial way, it will only be a matter of time before a romantic comedy set during quarantine, a political drama about the US virus response, or a horror film about a vaccine gone horribly wrong is brought into production. Though we have only been in quarantine since March, we are already beginning to see the coronavirus bleed into our cinema. The first film I saw it in was Borat 2. I was utterly shocked. With more free time to watch films than I have had in my entire life, I had spent months devouring all kinds of international cinema to keep myself sane and entertained. It was the first time a version of the world I saw when I walked out of my door was in front of me on my computer screen, and it surprisingly jolted me.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s misogynistic, racist, antisemetic, idiot reporter from Kazakhstan, in the midst of making even more of a fool out of the even more misogynistic, and racist buffoons of the Trump administration, finds himself in the United States in the midst of a global pandemic. He walks through the empty streets with the only person in sight being a masked and very bearded man who is finishing with his shopping. Borat asks what is happening and the man explains the best he can that everyone is at home self quarantining. Borat says he has nowhere to go, and the man, after hesitating a second, offers him to stay at his house.

The finale of the film is brilliantly rewritten to become the first film that makes the pandemic an essential part of its plot. While I have my problems with some of Baron Cohen’s comedic decisions which sometimes feels utterly pointless and even hurtful, there is no doubt that he also has moments of genius, and I don’t think I have ever laughed as much in a film as I did in the first Borat film. The second may not be as good just because it is impossible to live up the unexpected ridiculousness and daringness of the first film, especially since Baron Cohen became a household name thanks to the first film, but it did squeak out some tear shedding laughs from me, and, as the first film was, is a sometimes scary piece of documentary filmmaking into the dark heart of America that has become Trump’s America in the 14 years since the release of the first film.

The posters of Borat’s famous exposing and skimpy yellow swimsuit replaced by blue masks that cover his private parts were a piece of marketing genius. I am sure that the next time I see people wearing masks on screen it won’t be so shocking, but it was an unexpectedly current moment that, combined with the pre election hysteria, truly makes it a defining film of 2020.

The second film I saw is less about the coronavirus, and more a product of it. Rob Savage’s Host is a horror film that inventively takes place entirely on zoom and is made in the style of found footage successes like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, or Paranormal Activity. It tells the story of a group of friends who decide to do a seance over zoom. Predictably, their idea of an evening of creepy, harmless fun goes wrong when they convoke a demon that starts picking them off one by one. 

The film is certain to become an immediate cult classic like the horror films aforementioned. It has an immediacy to it thanks to the pandemic, and a familiarity to it because of the films that came before it. One can invent some clever readings such as the idea that our relationships are becoming possessed by video chats and the inability to meet in person, that we no longer connect since we cannot connect physically, our conversations being constantly interrupted by the loss of signal and bad connection. The very leader of the seance, a silver haired Scottish woman herself gets kicked out of the video chat and is unable to guide her companions through their ghostly encounter, as a seeming representation of all of us, lost in a cyber world of human connections that are more images than humans, leaving the unlucky scarred beyond the hope of being able to be around people without panicking. However interesting these readings may be, they certainly give the film more credit than it deserves. Maybe in the future a horror film will come along that will satisfyingly deal with these themes, but for now Host is probably nothing more than an effective, silly, jump out and scare you horror film for adolescents.

That is not to say that it is without  merit. I had a blast at the screening, and, at a short 57 minute runtime, the film breezes right along, scaring you at all the right times. Those scares may be nothing more than cheap bangs and things popping up in front of the screen. It is not likely the film will hold up to repeat viewing, but I felt like a teenager again, watching a silly scary film that knows exactly what it is, and delivers precisely what you expect without boring you.

It also makes great use of its zoom setting, using the limited frame impressively, especially in a shot of a girl who covers her head with a blanket so that only one of her eyes are visible in a dark shrouded tent of fabric. It also features a creepy zoom background and some filters that recognize the form of the spirit and continue to appear when they are not wanted. The excuse to make the runtime as short as it is is clevely explained through zoom’s policy of only allowing 40 minute meetings for groups without an account. The breaks in connection are also nice touches. The film fits in masks, food delivery, and funny conversations about parents behaving badly and relationships turned sour in quarantine that give it a real sense of time and place in the here and now.

Host may not be a major artistic success, but it is a fun quarantine idea that completely meets the requirements for a more than passable silly and jumpy horror film. What may be more telling from Borat and Host is not what they are about but how they are being seen as Borat premiered on Amazon prime and Host on the streaming platform Shudder. They may not be revolutionary aesthetically or thematically, but they certainly might be when we talk about distribution in the next coming years.

What is clear from both films is that the coronavirus is about to infect our cinema. From gross out comedy, to adolescent horror, and everything in between, we can be sure that we are only seeing the beginning of pandemic cinema. It is only a matter of time before social distancing, masks, gel, and vaccines become as present on our screens as they are in our everyday lives. Get ready to see a masked Tom Cruise saving the world in the next Mission Impossible, brightly colored masks of deep red and turquoise on the face of Almodovar’s next heroine, not to mention whatever monument Emmerich can think of making the microscopic bug obviate in his sure to be upcoming Coronavirus disaster extravaganza.