Random Pretty Accurate Movies About Pandemics (12 items)

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  (#9) Monty Python and the Holy Grail

  • John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, Neil Innes, Connie Booth, John Young, Sandy Johnson, Julian Doyle, Bee Duffell, Maggie Weston, Rita Davies, Charles Knode, Joni Flynn, Roy Forge Smith, Sally Kinghorn, Zack Matalon, Mary Allen, Margarita Doyle, William Palin, Romilly Squire, Judy Lamb, Alison Walker, Tom Raeburn, Mitsuko Forstater, Tracy Sneddon, Fiona Gordon, Avril Stewart, Elspeth Cameron, Gloria Graham, Yvonne Dick, Sandy Rose, Joyce Pollner, Sally Coombe, Vivienne MacDonald, Daphne Darling, Sylvia Taylor, Anna Lanski, Loraine Ward, Mark Zycon

  What It Gets Right: Monty Python may not scream "scientific and historical accuracy," but there's more truth to the absurd comedy than meets the eye. For example, the bubonic plague body collector screaming, "Bring out your dead!" wasn't too far from what happened during the Black Plague.

  Even the whole debacle about accidentally taking a man who hasn't actually perished has its roots in history. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1665) describes how the pandemic hit London. In his accounts, the body collectors almost buried a drunken, passed-out man they had mistaken for deceased. 

  Where It Falls Short: Of course, this classic comedy isn't meant to be a well of factual truth. It plays up the lack of scientific inquiry of the times, like when a rabid crowd determines a woman is a witch because she doesn't weigh as much as a duck.

  The scene in which the French catapult a live cow over the wall at their enemies isn't exactly historically accurate either - though it's not far off. In reality, enemy combatants hurled expired or diseased animals and humans over castle walls as a means of bioterrorism. 
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  (#3) The Andromeda Strain

  • Paula Kelly, David Wayne, Arthur Hill, Eric Christmas, James Olson, Kate Reid, Ramon Bieri, Peter Hobbs, Frances Reid, George Mitchell, Kermit Murdock, Peter Helm, Joe Di Reda, Carl Reindel, Mark Jenkins

  What It Gets Right: For being based off of a 1969 sci-fi thriller by Michael Crichton, 1971's The Andromeda Strain gets a lot of things right when it comes to biosafety with unknown viruses. According to SciFi Addicts, the elite crew studying an extraterrestrial virus that has wiped out an entire town didn't spare any expense when it came to safety. In fact, the scientists' facilities in the film have all the bells and whistles of a Biosafety Level 4 facility. This is the most secure level of working conditions, as it is designed for scientists studying agents or viruses that are highly infectious, deadly, and have no known therapies or vaccines.

  Fans of the film also note that it pays attention to smaller, scientific details - like the fact lasers aren't visible unless there is a gas in the air.

  Where It Falls Short: The alien contagion is not only able to mutate, but it can also absorb mass, synthetic materials, and energy itself. This makes the scientists in the film fear that even if they had to nuke their facilities in the case of an outbreak, it would only strengthen the agent. Since the Andromeda Strain is technically extraterrestrial, however, it is easy to see why the filmmakers took some creative license with its abilities. Even scientists of the time worried about the power of extraterrestrial agents.

  As microbiologist Joshua Lederberg told Popular Mechanics in 1962, "The return of such samples to Earth exposes us to a hazard of contamination by foreign organisms... [including] the introduction of a new disease which would imperil human life."
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  (#12) Flu

  • Soo Ae, Jang Hyuk, Cha In-pyo, Yu Hae-jin, Kim Ki-hyeon, Ma Dong-Seok, Lee Hee-joon, Park Hyo-joo, Park Min-ha, Lee Sang-yeob, Kahlid Elijah Tapia, Park Jung-Min, Tom Bauer, Boris Stout, Kim Hyung-seok, Choi Byung-mo, Khoi Dao, Choi Jung-hyun, Yang Myung-heon, Lee Seung-joon, Andrew William Brand, Noh Gi-hong, Lee Dong-jin, Wesley Marshall, Lee Sang-hyung, Wayne W. Clark, Kim Moon-soo, Jo Hwi-joon, Ham Jin-seong, Son So-yeong, Lee Young-soo

  What It Gets Right: Kim Sung-su's South Korean film Flu does what most pandemic movies do well: examine the collapse and chaos of society as a lethal, airborne virus wreaks havoc only miles away from a large city, where it can quickly spread. The virus in question, H5N1, AKA bird flu, takes the lives of the infected within 36 hours.

  In real life, this strain of the flu is particularly lethal. Of the 600 people infected worldwide, 60% have succumbed to the virus. 

  Where It Falls Short: Despite its high mortality rate, the H5N1 strain found in nature doesn't pass from mammal to mammal. Rather, people diagnosed with the deadly flu directly interacted with infected birds. Scientists did create a H5N1 strain that is contagious between humans to study it, but it is under lock and key at laboratories.

  If this new strain of bird flu were to start infecting a human population, it wouldn't be a freak occurrence like in Flu.
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  (#7) 28 Weeks Later

  • Rose Byrne, Idris Elba, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, Robert Carlyle, Catherine McCormack, Harold Perrineau, Emily Beecham, Raymond Waring, Garfield Morgan, Tommy Gunn, James Fiddy, João Costa Menezes, Jude Poyer, Amanda Walker, Beans Balawi, Dean Alexandrou, Didier Dell Benjamin, Mackintosh Muggleton, Tristan Tait, Philip Bulcock, Daniel Jefferson, Andrew Byron, William Meredith, Debbie Kurup, Roderic Culver, Selina Lo, Shahid Ahmed, Amanda Lawrence, Ed Coleman, Karen Meagher, Stewart Alexander, Gareth Clarke, Chris Ryman, Jane Osborn, Tom Bodell, Matt Reeves, Meghan Popiel, Kish Sharma, Drew Rhys-Williams, Jane Thorne, Maeve Malley-Ryan, Simon Delaney, Sarah Finigan, Joseph Ripley, Thomas Garvey

  What It Gets Right: In 28 Days Later, audiences are introduced to the rage virus, a highly contagious, lethal disease that infects within 20 seconds of contact. In the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, the British are dealing with the aftermath of the initial infection. American armies come in and set up a "Green Zone" where there are no infected people.

  A woman returns from the Red Zone and seems to be okay - but she is an asymptomatic carrier of the rage virus. Asymptomatic carriers - or people who have a virus but show no symptoms - are a very real threat when it comes to the spread of infectious diseases.

  Where It Falls Short: As critics noted with the first film, the rage virus itself is impossible, as no virus is able to replicate so quickly that it produces symptoms in 20 seconds. There are also some moments when audiences really have to suspend their disbelief, like when two children are able to leave the military-guarded Green Zone and return to the Red Zone without detection. 
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  (#2) Virus

  What It Gets Right: Aashiq Abu's Virus felt realistic to many because it was something they had experienced. Abu based his 2019 film off the very real Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala, India, just a year prior. Several of the characters were based on the health officials on the front line of the outbreak, including nurse Lini Puthussery. The film accurately captures the paranoia that comes with rampant misinformation in the face of an outbreak and the mounting pressure on state officials to take action.

  Where It Falls Short: In order to give his film more dramatic weight, Abu played up the tension between state officials surrounding the origin of the virus being possibly linked to bioterrorism. "It is real," Abu said of the fear. "Since no one had any clue (about the source of the virus), this pressure was there from our state team also. It was settled very peacefully though. We just adapted that to build a cinematic pressure."
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  (#10) The Normal Heart

  • Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Alfred Molina, Jim Parsons, Taylor Kitsch, Denis O'Hare, Jonathan Groff, B. D. Wong, Stephen Spinella, Joe Mantello, John Mainieri, Frank De Julio, William DeMeritt, Adam B. Shapiro

  What It Gets Right: HBO's adaptation of Larry Kramer's 1985 stage play The Normal Heart got a lot of things right. The film accurately depicted the culture in many urban LGBTQ+ communities, with clubbing and partying functioning as a political statement and an act of rebellion against heteronormative culture. However, bath houses and casual, unprotected trysts made it easy for the virus to rampantly spread throughout the community.

  The film also delves into the early days of the AIDS crisis, when the disease was still being referred to as a "gay cancer." Director Ryan Murphy had a historian or a doctor on set at all times to make sure the film was "medically accurate."

  Where It Falls Short: Murphy has no qualms turning his work into a soapbox for a cause, especially those concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Yes, it may be medically accurate, but there are moments from the original play that lay out numbers and statistics surrounding the outbreaks that were traded for more sentimental, emotionally manipulative moments.

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