20 Anxiety-Inducing Moments That'll Terrify You Senseless

Some works of fiction get even more powerful with time.

Contagion was always terrifying. Its vivid, well-researched, and chillingly believable depiction of a global pandemic allowed it to be one of the scariest non-horror movies out there. Still, it saves its most haunting moment for last, as it flashes back to the very beginning of the outbreak to show how patient zero, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), got infected.

So, how did it all begin? A random, at-first-glance inconsequential series of events - a bat drops a bit of banana which a pig then eats... and when the pig is slaughtered by a chef, he pops outside to shake hands with Beth, all while Cliff Martinez's chilling electronic score pulses away in the background. 

The wrong bat met the wrong pig, and then one handshake set off a pandemic that, by the end of the movie, has killed at least 32 million worldwide. The natural world really is a frightening place. 

And of course, this all hits even harder now, because, less than a decade ago, something very similar actually happened.