Virus [dir. Abu Aashiq]

2019's Virus is a movie about the epidemic outbreak of Nipah virus in 2018 that was successfully tackled by the health and administration authorities in Kerala. While it is not identical to the Covid-19 we are facing now, it shares some notable characteristics and is important from the POV of depicting what an administration is made to do in such a crisis situation.

The ominous electronic music at the start of the film signals an impending disaster, which is not long in coming. The Kozhikode Govt Medical College Hospital sees a couple of patients who are suffering from fever and vomiting, and within a short period have massive blood pressure spikes and convulsions, and die. When the possibility of a contagious disease is hinted, the patient samples are sent to the Manipal Institute of Virology where the infection is confirmed to be of Nipah virus, a deadly pathogen with a high mortality (~90% of all infected), previously known to have created havoc in countries like Malaysia and Bangladesh.

The administration meets with health authorities and acts quickly, ordering a wide quarantine. But as more cases come in from different places, it becomes crucial to track the source of the virus and its mode of transmission between these seemingly unrelated people - unless a natural mode of transmission to each of the patients is conclusively established, they will also have to consider the possibility of a biological warfare plot. Thus along with the medical angle, Virus is also a serial killer mystery, only the killer is a germ.

To tackle this tangle of threads, Virus adopts a back-and-forth narrative. Many a time during the course of the emergency, the story winds back to the circumstances under which each of the infected (or the people around them) could have been exposed to the pathogen, thus revealing the links of the chain that connects them. This makes following the story occasionally tricky (if you can't recall all the faces you've seen), but it is essential to encompass the sprawling multi-directional cascade of events.

The cast is a Who's Who of modern sensible Malayalam cinema - Revathi, Tovino Thomas, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Kunchako Boban, Srinath Bhasi, Indrajith Sukumaran, Reema Kallingal, Shoubin Shahir, Dileesh Pothan and many others - some of them have big roles while others are in only a few scenes, but each commits to their part. Of course in a non-melodramatic thriller like this, it can mainly be a matter of looking grim and speaking in undertones, but they do what is required without drawing attention to their individual selves, which is laudatory for an ensemble production.

While the editing is in itself tight, some monotony is generated in all the back-and-forth. But this is reflective of the actual situation of the management of an epidemic outbreak; as someone rightly said, it is how well we can manage the gap between "being afraid and "growing tired of being afraid". As an engaging film in itself and as a reminder to all of us, the enormity of the challenge faced daily by the people forming our first line of defense against an insidious, tenacious enemy, Virus is a must-watch.