Outbreak
1995 · Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Original language: English
- action
- drama
- science fiction
- thriller
The story
A deadly airborne virus finds its way into the USA and starts killing off people at an epidemic rate. Col. Sam Daniels' job is to stop the virus spreading from a small town, which must be quarantined, and to prevent an over reaction by the White House.
What it’s like
Cold blue-green fluorescents in sterile labs give way to sun-bleached Californian and Zaire-set hillsides, and the film moves between them with the propulsive edge of a 1990s studio thriller: fast cutting, handheld urgency in the hot-zone scenes, and a bombastic orchestral score by James Newton Howard that swells whenever the clock starts ticking. The palette shifts from clinical white to dusty ochre and the deep green of the forest canopy, with the small town of Cedar Creek caught in quarantine under floodlights and helicopter rotor glare. The emotional register is brisk and urgent rather than mournful, with a steady undercurrent of paranoia about military and political overreaction. The rhythm is busy and escalating, the mood tense but rarely bleak. Intensity is moderate: a few bodies and gruesome sickness imagery, with haemorrhaging and death shown plainly, but no sustained gore, and some scenes of frightening outbreak and panic. It suits a weeknight thriller watch with a friend, and it is aimed at viewers who like competent, Hollywood-paced disaster films with a strong central pair of adult leads and a scientific procedural sheen.
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