Every once in a while a movie comes along that genuinely surprises you. The premise of Containment is simple. A group of neighbors, who have barely met, find themselves sealed into their apartments and the spot hazmat suit wearing personnel escorting people out of the next building over.
When I first read the concept I thought that it sounded remarkably like the concept for the Spanish film Rec. I was pleasantly surprised when it proved to be something far different, more original, and more realistic.
I have never lived in a tower block/apartment building; part of the reasoning behind this is because I always saw them as perfect havens for disease vectors. This movie plays with that concept to a great degree, along with themes about not knowing your neighbors, fear of authority, isolation, and paranoia.
For those who think this might devolve into another zombie movie, rest easy. This is about a killer flu-like virus that has cropped up in England and the latest cases have been detected in this tower block. In order to prevent infection the government seals off the buildings, going so far as to seal individuals into their apartments before taking people out in small groups to test them for infection. That is when things start to go wrong.
The main characters meet up by quite literally punching through their walls to link several apartments, or flats, together. From there they begin to plan how to escape and debate whether or not they even should. The characters are engaging and real to the audience, without too much cliche’, aside from the deadbeat divorced dad trying to get out to go to his child custody hearing.
I do not want to go into too much more detail however. This is a good movie and well worth your time to watch. I give it 4.5 stars only because they could have shown more of the disease than they did.
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Containment
Actors: Lee Ross, Andrew Leung
Directors: Neil McEnery-West
Format: Multiple Formats, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Rated: Unrated
Studio: Alchemy
DVD Release Date: September 22, 2015
Run Time: 70 minutes
Mark, a failed artist estranged from his wife and son, wakes one morning to discover that the doors and windows of his flat have been sealed shut. He assumes it’s a sick joke until he sees an army of ‘Hazmats’ – mysterious figures in protective suits – patrolling the grounds and snatching his fellow residents. When a neighbour smashes through their adjoining wall, Mark joins forces with his new-found ally and others from within the block. Together, they must work to defend themselves from the sinister Hazmats, but when they discover that the real danger is trapped inside the building, tempers fray and fear takes over. Loyalties are tested to their limits as friends and families turn against each other in an adrenaline-fueled fight for survival.
Stars: Lee Ross, Louise Brealey, Sheila Reed, Andrew Leung, Pippa Nixon, Andrew Postlethwaite
Director: Neil Mcenery-West
Writer: David Lemon
Containment
Summary
I have never lived in a tower block/apartment building; part of the reasoning behind this is because I always saw them as perfect havens for disease vectors. This movie plays with that concept to a great degree, along with themes about not knowing your neighbors, fear of authority, isolation, and paranoia.
This was a good movie so far, at first when the lady said the symptoms I assumed the boy had them, but turns out he didn’t. They might make a second one because of how it ended. What was the disease that went around, is it something real or just a made up one?
They kept almost everything about the disease pretty nebulous throughout the film. It appeared to be some sort of super flu, and I actually liked that aspect. Keeping it a mystery kept the movie from devolving into a Zombie horror movie, or expanding into a cure finding movie. In a way, this movie could exist inside/beside any outbreak or zombie movie, showing just a slice of what the average person would go through during the initial stages of such an outbreak.