If you are looking for another virus movie, people bleeding out of eyes and ears, helpless people mutating in any kind of sort, etc... Containment won't be for you. This movie scratches more the idea of people waking up, their flats are sealed and what should have been starting as an ordinary day turned into an emotional ride, as soon as they see the "officials" outside walking around in high level security suits. Willing to shoot everybody who attempts to escape. The problem of this movie now is that the writing is pretty bad. The sequences seem allover the place and a real plot is nowhere to be found. On top of that comes the low budget production which may give Containment a little bit of a realistic look, but for audiences it is quite hard to sit though. The reasons why this movie does not completely fail are Lee Ross and Sheila Reid who acted quite well with what they have been given. Especially Sheila Reid reminded me so much of Gladys (Eileen Ryan) in Eight Legged Freaks (aka Arac Attack) and she was given some very beautiful moments of screen time. The other characters are very stereotypical and this movie is placing itself closer to Quarantine 2 on the movie shelf than... let's say: Outbreak.

From the title and the movie jacket there is no mystery as to what "Containment" is about. There has been an outbreak of a mysterious virus and the British government wishes to contain it before it spreads too far. I've seen enough of these types of movies and a few of them have been done really well. I expected this movie to be along the lines of "Contagion", "REC" and others like them."Containment" started off really hot. Right away the main character finds himself locked into his own flat. From that point on it is a matter of finding out why. He is joined by other neighbors and one of them is just a powder keg ready to blow. It was at the time of the neighbors joining one another that the movie began to sour for me.I get that you need drama in movies for them to be exciting and worthwhile and a lot of times the drama comes from the characters themselves, but these characters were just plain unlikable. I get that stressful situations brings about certain behavior, but is it too much for people (neighbors no less) to be in accord just once? Because they were quarantined together I had to put up with this maddening motley crew for the entire movie. The focus was very local, as in you knew nothing more than what was going on at the apartment building under quarantine so all decisions being made were with the information available to the imprisoned. The containment situation went from bad to worse as level-headedness gave way to hysteria.

The problem with the film is that it has been done before, and much better. I am a fan of contagion themes - real ones, not zombies or some other crap like that - but I found this boring as hell. People talk a lot, overreact, reach stupid conclusions and then just fail right before implementing a good idea.The only thing they got right is how incompetent "the authorities" would be in a case like that, but even that has been done to death, especially in British productions.Bottom line: you know this film has failed when I suddenly found myself hoping the infected would act like zombies.

This is a first rate low-budget thriller. There's obviously shades of early Cronenberg in the subject matter, but more to the fore are wonderful nods to John Carpenter in the staging, photography and siege theme: Your enemies are inside as well as out; think Assault on Precinct 13 meets The Thing. The lighting often relies upon ambient sources and this adds tremendous atmosphere the to proceedings. Performances are very good, growing stronger throughout the runtime and dialogue is often crisp, to the point and wonderfully witty, squeezing the most out of each scene, without slowing down the pace. I found this just as satisfying as the big studio tentpole releases.