10 Sudden Time Jumps In Horror Movies That Completely Change Everything

If you don't consider Contagion a horror movie, just look at how prophetically and depressingly it foreshadowed, well, the last four years. That aside, it also features one of the most devastating time jumps in the genre's recent history. With a single jump cut, Steven Soderbergh shows the unrelenting, uncaring efficiency of the focal virus spreading across the globe.

Mid-way through the movie, while Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) is attempting to trace patient zero of the virus, she herself becomes infected. As Mears' sickness progresses, she's certainly looking in bad shape, but even in her condition, attempts to comfort an even sicker patient lying in a cot next to her.

At that moment, however, Soderbergh jarringly jump-cuts to Mears, now dead, bound, and placed in a mass grave alongside many other victims, joltingly confirming that she sadly succumbed to the virus.

While clearly not a huge leap forward in time, it's no less a devastating one, taking Mears from sickness to death in a single frame, and presenting the virus' impact on humanity through an impressively detached, unsentimental lens.