Movies to stream during Self-Quarantine

It all started with a cough …
With the novel coronavirus threat sneaking around, out-of-home entertainment options like cinema theaters, bars, gyms, and restaurants that have closed we’re all stuck inside for a good long-drawn time. With very little possibilities of going out to watch them on the big screen, downloading or streaming movies is our only option now.

It’s not surprising we all of a sudden seem to have an appetite for quarantine related streaming content, so here are some of the best ones and where you can stream them from home.

GROUNDHOG DAY (1993)

Language: English

Filmmakers across the globe have overused the central premise of Groundhog Day. However, Harold Ramis’ film still remains fresh, relevant, and absolutely beautiful. This is one of the very few films that take you on a roller-coaster of emotions, leaving you with a pleasant, uplifting feeling of having watched something truly incredible during this quarantine time. Thanks to a committed performance by Bill Murray.

Available on Amazon Prime

FLU (2013)

Language: Korean

Flu (aka Gamgi) is brilliantly staged and riveting in its two-hour running time. This Korean epidemic movie opens with a container full of illegal immigrants, which is opened by a human smuggler in a satellite city near Seoul. There’s only one survivor, a man who wanders through the city disoriented and unable to speak the language. The chunk of the drama, however, revolves around a firefighter who is sort of dating a doctor, also a single mother, when the deadly contagion that kills within 36 hours grips the town.

Available on Amazon Prime

VIRUS (2019)

Language: Malayalam

This Malayalam/Indian outbreak story showcases the threat of a deadly infection from interestingly different perspectives, which is all-encompassing and intimate. It is based on the May 2018 Kerala Nipah virus outbreak, which claimed 17 people’s life. The thriller narrates the painful losses while also acknowledging the professional integrity of the disparate set of individuals who all played a crucial role in containing the epidemic.

Available on Amazon Prime

CONTAGION (2011)

Language: English

The screen is black and all you hear is the sound of Beth Emhoff gently coughing. That’s how Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film “Contagion” opens. In Japan, a businessman collapses on a bus, a fellow passenger record the man’s misery on his phone. Down with a fever a young man in Hong Kong enters his apartment and falls into his girlfriend’s hands. These random images of symptoms perfectly correlate with the current deadly pandemic than it did in 2011. It is one of the most grounded disease thrillers that touches upon the various troubles in a world wracked by a virus.

Available on Vudu

OUTBREAK (1995)

Language: English

A deadly virus ravages an impoverished village in Zaire. The village is fire-bombed fearing its contagious nature and high death rate. 30 years later, the virus goes airborne, when an infected monkey caught in Zaire’s wild is smuggled to California. Topmost virologists Dustin Hoffman and his ex-wife team-up to search the virus’ source and an antidote. They are joined by other top administration authorities in medical and defense departments.

The movie was inspired by Richard Preston’s 1994 non-fiction book The Hot Zone which chronicles the discovery of a new strain of the Ebola virus in 1989. Nevertheless, Outbreak is an entertaining thriller that plays on our anxieties of an unconquerable pandemic.

Available on Amazon Prime

The Host (2006)

Language: Korean

What’s worse than a chemically-enhanced river monster stealing your kids? A chemically-enhanced incubus of viral plague, that’s what. As one family battles through a quarantined Seoul to rescue their missing daughter Bong Joon Ho’s The Host tackles that nightmare in full. While special effects may have come a long way in 14 years, the film’s tragic depiction of family dynamics in a time of epidemic stands up and dexterously demonstrates why the Parasite director proved so overwhelming on this year’s awards circuit.

Available on Amazon Prime

12 Monkeys (1995)

Language: English

In this masterful sci-fi fable by Terry Gilliam, Cole (Bruce Willis) an unbalanced prisoner is sent back in time to 1996 from 2035, where the remnants of humanity live underground. His mission is to find and obtain a sample of the virus that washed out civilization so that future scientists can examine it and find a remedy. 12 Monkeys, Based on the French short film LaJetee, is about the way that human emotion and intellect can distort reality and time, and its vision of a dying society hidden underground by the outbreak of a pathogen is a chilling metaphor.

Available on Netflix

28 Days Later (2002)

Language: English

Cillian Murphy, Our hero is unaware of the virus because of a stint in hospital in a coma, who finds London a deserted wasteland just 28 days after the outbreak started. This Danny Boyle’s seminal running zombie movie finds a place on the list, where other zombie films may not because of its clarity that the pandemic is caused by animals infected with a virus. These are sick people and not reanimated undead. The virus is nicknamed ‘rage’ and sees the infected become fiercely strong and deadly. 

Available on Hulu

Blindness (2008)

Language: English

Based on Jose Saramago’s novel this film from director Fernando Meirelles portraits a highly contagious disease that renders much of the world’s population blind in. None of the characters in a cast led by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore are named, as the film follows the book’s metaphorical nature while not shying away from the horrors that befall as civilization collapses. More about human nature and less about science, the movie suggests that humanity will need to adapt different perspectives to survive a global cataclysm. A lesson worth remembering as we work our way through the current pandemic days.

Available on Amazon Prime

Train To Busan (2016)

Language: Korean

This Korean zombie movie is a scary depiction of how quickly a virus can spread. Seok-woo, an absent father, boards a train from Seoul to Busan with his daughter while one infected woman boards another carriage. Every passenger in that carriage is infected and Seok-woo must work with other passengers to try to keep the healthy carriages separate from the infected. Thrilling and Emotional with breakneck pacing. Peninsula, a sequel to this movie was due to land this year, but will likely undergo the same fate as many other upcoming movie releases.

Available on Netflix

So, Stay home, lock the doors, and get nice and cozy with these great quarantine movies.