Going by votes and what seems to be the general consensus in the other reviews, I expected considerably worse from this. It's by all means watchable, if I wouldn't quite classify it a "must" to view. I don't know all the facts about what this was based on, though I do recall the fear and some of what the papers said about it all. I am not the person to ask about whether or not this was a realistic depiction. I could see those into the kind of film enjoying this. The plot is interesting and develops well pretty much throughout the entire thing. The acting varies, and there are certainly no award winning performances herein, but there really aren't any moments that are downright painful to sit through on account of it, either. Pacing is adequate if not more than that. Cinematography and editing, with few exceptions(one mainly being due to the excessive use of the same sound), was a pleasant surprise. Not too simple... you can tell that it's a recent movie... but not overly stylized or anything of the sort, either. Merely a reasonably firm grip on the tricks of the technical aspects of film-making, and fairly effective use of them. There are dramatic bits that work in this. Some of it is potentially disturbing. The various reactions to the occurrences are varied and come off genuine. This does seem to lack a satisfying conclusion, however... what happens is not necessarily, by definition, bad, I'm just not sure it was what was called for here. I recommend this to fans of disaster flicks. 6/10

I would ignore all the negative comments people have been posting. It's well worth watching.Not bad for a made for TV movie and much better than Pandemic. The storyline not only gives a realistic perspective, but a plausible one at that.If I had any complaint at all it would be that they never finished it. I was forced to search to see if my DVD was incomplete. To my dismay the continuation to the next wave would be left to the mind of a viewer. With the number of things my mind can come up with "The Stand" comes to mind, that or total annihilation.

Made-for-TV movies hold a dear place in my heart, for some reason I totally fail to grasp. There's just something I love about the inherent "B" quality that always seems to crop up in them. Not everybody sees it this way.I gather from reading the other comments here that many of you tuned in hoping to see a movie. This is a common misconception about TV movies. You aren't really watching a movie, you're watching a two hour long episode in a TV series you will never see the rest of.Actually, the last TV movie I saw about a pandemic disease was the multi-part adaptation of Stephen King's "The Stand," which came out embarrassingly well done. There was none of that here, but what, really, were you expecting? I have no idea how accurate the disease information in this movie is; I don't really care. The fact is that I've seen a fair amount of TV movies by ABC and CBS (none from NBC, though I hear there's one out this week) and I'd have to say that ABC makes a consistently better movie than CBS does.CBS likes to make disaster movies. I saw BOTH "Category 6" and "Category 7" on CBS, and I'm glad to say that "Fatal Contact," though cheesy, is "Citizen Kane" compared to either of these. The characters here are fairly believable, the special effects were not overplayed (TV movies always have terrible special effects, and even their regular effects aren't that hot), and I even liked the ending. I felt it was satisfactory.All told, TV movies are never that good. The case for most of them is that if they turned up in theaters, you would walk out and demand your money back. But with direct-to-TV productions everything's a little bit more freewheeling. Relax, and immerse yourselves in the the heavy-handed plots and shallow budgets of network feature films...

What garbage, is there actually no part II? If this movie actually ends the way it did, everyone involved with this movie should be ashamed. This movie is nothing close to a movie like Outbreak, which was actually a fairly decent movie. This movie was rushed in hopes of being able to gain a few easy dollars. I started watching the movie under the assumption that it would be bad, but I never imagined it would be this bad. This movie was nothing more then a way to exploit the fears of the American people for profit! If you have not seen this movie, don't bother. Movie is full of poorly developed characters and poor acting. I really hope the production of this movie was only a couple of weeks. Stay away! Don't be fooled by the hype!