Coronavirus Survival Kit

The Coronavirus Adventure: A Disaster Movie Review

I walk into the theatre, take my seat and the lights go off. The movie starts with a sunny winter day in Ottawa, Canada. The protagonists start hearing reports about some exotic new disease in a country half way around the world. It maybe started by eating bats or pangolins? Always a bad idea. The disease is so alarming that officials in that country ban people to their homes, close down the city and erect two huge hospitals within a few days. People going to get food are monitored by drones and their temperatures are checked before they are allowed to enter the grocery store. “Huh, that’s pretty crazy. Only a totalitarian regime could pull that off,” I think to myself while I stuff my face with popcorn.

The death toll rises dramatically and other countries become desperate to get their citizens out of this viral hotspot.

In the next scene there are people on cruise ships being forcibly quarantined and unable to leave their rooms. Couples are bickering “I wanted to go to an all-inclusive but noooo, you wanted to go on a fucking cruise!” People in inside cabins with no portholes to see daylight are ticking the days off by writing on the cabin walls. “That would seriously suck,” goes my internal monologue.

In the inevitable newscaster shot, they start listing new spots where the virus has spread – Iran, South Korea, Japan. Places far away in the minds of the movie audience. It’s still pretty relaxed.

We are shown people coughing in a plaza in Italy. Then shots of overcrowded hospitals. A doctor has not enough ventilators and has to decide between saving a 16 year old or a 60 year old with heart issues. The pace picks up and people in the audience lean forward. They clearly identify more with the Europeans. There are criticisms that Italy did not take it seriously enough to respond quickly. There is a charming scene with Italians singing and playing accordions on their balconies, defiant in the face of fate.

There’s a map with red dots appearing all over Europe and the UK wherever there is an outbreak. Then shots of famous landmarks with no people in the scenes. “Oh, I’ve been there,” you hear a few times from other audience members. The movie is starting to hook them in. No one is feeding the pigeons in St. Peter’s Square. For the love of God, who will feed the pigeons?

The word Pandemic is introduced into the script as well as the idea this will spread all over the world. We have all seen disaster movies before; we know how this goes. Eventually it will come close to home to ramp up the tension.

We hear that a number of seniors have died in a care home in California. How sad, but inevitable. Oh, I recognize this trope from other movies and tv. These guys are the “red shirts.” Foreigners and old people are cannon fodder before the big bad comes after the real protagonists: people more like us. I am waiting to see if they drag out another irritating trope – the fat woman who either dies in a way that is humiliatingly "comical" or heartbreakingly tragic. I’m walking out if they go that far. I’m still not over Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure.

North American politicians dither and disseminate but those of us who have been watching this movie from the opening credits know what is coming because we watched it play out in the places we originally thought had nothing to do with us.

“It’s just like the flu. We have it all in hand. The risk is low.” Did you not pay attention to the previous scenes? The audience are feeling panicky for the North American populations. It’s the same feeling as when the pretty girl in the horror movie decides to go down to the dark basement alone.

We see a larger division in the characters we are following. Some are still going about their daily lives thinking this is being blown up bigger than it is or it won’t really affect them. There are scenes set in bars holding St. Patrick parties with attractive young people drinking green beer and hooking up. Disaster films never end well for these people. After all, they are morality plays. An older, more mortality oriented demographic thinks toilet paper will disappear from the earth and run to corner the market. Um, what? Are they making full body anti-germ wraps with that?

Americans queue up to buy guns. Are these Chekhov’s guns? I sincerely hope not.

There’s a rumour that dogs can spread it and are quarantined. “No, not the dogs! You can kill every human on earth but not the dogs!” It’s okay. The World Health Organization announces dogs can’t infect people. WHO let the dogs out. *

More people are being tested, but not nearly enough. Borders are closed, people return to their home countries if they can. Some are sick and not allowed to board planes, others can’t get flights home. Politicians quibble about whether to keep businesses open or close them. Things start feeling more chaotic as things close and everything feels uncertain for our poor characters.

It’s not completely uncertain for the audience, though. We’ve been watching. We know our disaster flicks and what happens next.

Positive cases begin appearing amongst people who meet the criteria to be tested. They have no idea how many cases there are amongst the people who didn’t meet the criteria. As characters continue to arrive back to their homes and community transmissions continue they will suddenly see a huge number of people sick. Celebrities, sports stars and politicians will come down with it. One character at a checkout will pass The National Enquirer and some aging superstar will be under a ventilator mask on their cover.

Someone coughs in the theatre and we all startle.

We watch as comprehension begins to dawn in stages for our protagonists. This isn’t a staycation or Netflix and chill as usual. Jobs, social connections and lives are going to be lost.

It takes a week for symptoms to go from mild and flu-like to needing critical care. The pace is much faster now. Our characters start to panic as people they know and have had contact with end up in hospital. The streets are finally empty. There’s a flashback to the scene in Italy with the doctor having to decide who lives and who dies and then a cut back to Canada and a doctor in a similar quandary.

The superimposed text tells us it is one week later. We are shown jump shots of the news cycle. It’s all numbers of the dead. Doctors are being brought out of retirement and drafted from medical schools. The US, which acted slower and has a larger population has a completely overwhelmed health system. Canada isn’t that much better. The Choose Your Own Adventure option closed three weeks ago. If the characters closed everything up quickly enough back then and kept it closed there will be limited, though substantial, amounts of dead. If they didn’t, well then, this will be a true disaster movie. It's a real cliffhanger.

Even the audience doesn’t know the next piece. Will the survivors have immunity? If so, will it be short or long lived? How long past usual flu season will this virus last? Will it come back next season? How long until we can find a vaccine?

I am not looking forward to this sequel.

Shout out to Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa Medical Doctor of Health, who gave firm guidance sooner than many. She obviously knows how these disaster movies play out.

*Not original to me. Heard it on the internet.