10 Movies That Got Better YEARS Later

Steven Soderbergh's Contagion was always a brilliantly chilling, unsentimental thriller about a world-ravaging pandemic, but up until 2020 we as viewers had a certain healthy, comfortable distance from it - that it was something we simply couldn't imagine actually living through.

And while the COVID-19 pandemic was ultimately nowhere near as severe as the one depicted in Contagion - which had a mortality rate of 25-30% compared to COVID's 2-3% - it nevertheless made rewatching Contagion a wholly more haunting and relatable experience.

Ultimately so much of Scott Z. Burns' impeccably well-researched script turned out to be true - especially the state of global panic a pandemic would cause, and the conspiracy theory grifters who swiftly emerged from the woodwork.

When Contagion came out, some reviews felt that Jude Law's conspiracy theorist character was a bit too outlandish, yet in light of everything we've seen for ourselves in the pandemic, that hardly seems the case now.

Contagion probably isn't a film you'll watch for comfort, but loaded with the first-hand knowledge we all now have of a real-life pandemic, it's even more bracingly effective.