You don't have to be infected with a virulent, killer disease to work here. But it helps.

Posted on Monday March 1, 2010, 09:27 by Nev Pierce in Empire States

Death is the villain you can't beat. Infection is the villain you can beat, slice, mash and shoot repeatedly in the head.

Infection makes for great cinema. OK, infection makes for OK cinema, mostly... with occasional stabs at greatness. But it's spreading.

Today, you have a choice in your Disease Of The Week movie.

There's Extraordinary Measures, which reviewers tell us is essentially 105 minutes of Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser trying to out-scowl each other in the quest to cure Pompe disease (something to do with over-spending until your football club is on the verge of bankruptcy).

Or you can catch The Crazies, in which an accidentally applied government bio-weapon turns a town of hick Yanks into fury-fuelled simpletons who keep trying to kill each other. Yes, apparently, this is different from usual.

The Crazies is a remake of George Romero's '70s shocker. Not only has Romero made - in Night, Dawn & Day Of The Dead - three of the best films ever about death (eat your brain out, Ingmar Bergman), he's also made one of the best about infection, panic and fear.

Yeah, all right, it's pretty much still a zombie movie - with the distinction being these slavering, blood-thirsty beasts still have a heartbeat, whereas zombies are dead flesh only animated by their still-sparking cerebral cortex.

This was a concept - rage spread through infection - that Alex Garland and Danny Boyle homaged/half-inched for 28 Days Later and you might have thought the success of that splatter series would preclude a straight-ahead remake, but that is to seriously misunderestimate Hollywood's hunger for horror product.

So, The Crazies 2010: a story of a civilian area suffering a hideous, anger-causing infection only made worse by the intervention of American troops. In 1973, the analogy was Vietnam; 37 years later it's Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a government agent explains, of the calamitous virus: "It's designed to destabilise a population. In this case, the wrong one..." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Crazies is pretty good - not as cruel or gripping as the original, but a lot slyer and smarter than most contemporary schlockers and ably powered by the criminally underrated Timothy Olyphant, who remains one of America's best-kept acting secrets, despite consistently excelling in virtually everything he's done (his work in The Safety Of Objects is very special indeed).

Olyphant would probably kill - or, y'know, really pressure his agent - to land a role in Contagion, Steven Soderbergh's in-the-works ensemble thriller about a pandemic.

As it is, it stars Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne and Every Other Serious Actor In The World in the globe-spanning story of a virus.

It was inspired by a sneeze in Scott Z Burns's sadly under-appreciated The Informant, which caused the screenwriter to chat with Soderbergh about the nature of infection. "The easy way to pitch it is Traffic meets Outbreak," Burns told an audience at a Q&A for Jeff Goldsmith's excellent screenwriting podcast.

"Outbreak shouldn't really be in there, but it's an easy way to explain it," he added, presumably believing that associating your film with Dustin Hoffman chasing a monkey is not a good thing (little realising there are few films that would not be improved by Dustin Hoffman chasing a monkey; Extraordinary Measures, for one).

Contagion will be released next year and probably bug Oscar voters, but before then British audiences can appreciate Black Death. Opening in the UK on May 28, the latest from Severance director Chris Smith features Sean Bean, a necromancer and the bubonic plague.

Why do viruses thrive on film? And what are your favourite infection flicks or disease DVDs?

And, while we're about it, has there ever been a good movie made about terminal illness? (You are not allowed to suggest Beaches, because I am never, ever, going to watch it.)

My theory is that cinema is about action and nothing - in its essence, its meaning - is more dynamic than a virus. It exists to destroy - a bit like Michael Bay. But you're smarter than that, so: why is cinematic infection catching?