Containment
Director: Neil West
Writer: David Lemon, Neil West
Cast: Lee Ross, Sheila Reid, Gabriel Senior, Andrew Leung, Billy Postlethwaite, Louise Brealey, Pippa Nixon, Kevin Squelch, Christos Lawton
Seen on: 10.8.2026

Plot:
One morning, an entire apartment building complex finds itself surrounded by people in hazmat suits, barred from leaving their own homes and with every connection to the outside world cut off, the residents are becoming nervous. Among them is more or less struggling artist Mark (Lee Ross) who was supposed to go to a custody hearing. He quickly finds himself in a group of neighbors who all try to find out what’s going on and to find a way out of this mess.

Containment is a low-budget SciFi movie that is rather strange to watch with the experience of Covid pandemic. I mean, for one, people are willing to go over dead bodies to get a vaccine here. Overall, it doesn’t have that much that is new, but it has enough that is solid to keep your interest, even if it isn’t that much to write home about in the end.

Containment is a debut feature with a small budget, so it is unrealistic to expect a polished Hollywood film. But the kind of aesthetic fit the story and its setting nicely: the buildings and their apartments are a bit grimy, their inhabitants far from glossy, and a mysterious illness is also nothing that sparkles.

That being said, at times I did wish for a bit more experience, especially when it came to characterization. The characters here barely get to be more than stereotypes and the dialogues are often wooden, both in writing and delivery. But okay, I can live with that.

The story that develops with these characters hits all the spots along the way that you’d expect. Even though it appears to try to surprise you, it is therefore doomed to actually do it. That doesn’t mean that is free of all satisfaction – it is fun and interesting enough to walk the well-trodden path, too.

Overall, though, the thing that I will remember most is that just a few short years before Covid and the misguided vaccination paranoia it kicked into high gear, people really believed that vaccinations were good. Can’t we go back to that?

Summarizing: okay