You may have noticed that I’ve been a little poor at keeping up with the Girlymicrobiologist site admin, and missing the odd weekly blog post. This isn’t because I’ve been slacking, honest, it’s more because I may have become a little distracted by a new project. I promise to get back on top of things soon, but in the meantime I thought I owed you an update.
Many of you have been kind enough to support last years project, which was a book aimed at supporting people to engage with research and research degrees, and I couldn’t be more grateful for your cheer leading. This new project, however, in the words of Monty Python could be described as ‘and now for something completely different’. It couldn’t be further from a book about academic study. This one is all about something else I love passionately, movies and TV.
I finished and launched the last book last October, and to be honest it hadn’t occurred to me, prior to letting it go into the wild, that I would write anything else till my retirement – when I’m planning to write some pathology based murder mysteries. It was never the plan to do something again, at least so soon. Frankly though, my brain tends to disrupt all my best laid plans, and ideas come meaning I just can’t help myself but get swept up. I’m blaming Ian McKellen inspiring me to ‘practice any art’.
Despite having no plans to do more, I have to say that I really enjoyed writing the first book, and I found the process of being able to write in a different way very fulfilling. I love writing this blog, and the first book is based on a lot of the pieces I have written for here, but it was nice to see them come together and take on a new and different life of their own. I also enjoyed mixing up the writing of something on a single theme with writing blogs on different topics for here, although I did rely a lot on Dr Claire Walker bringing together many guest blogs to allow me some writing time. It was lovely to see what those guest blogs brought to the site, and I really enjoyed seeing how including those voices really makes this feel even more like a community space. Without realising it, I think I caught ‘the bug’. Now, I’ve always enjoyed writing, this is my happy space, but I had never seen myself as an author, having held a book I’d written in my hands though, I can see how it could become a little addictive.
As I was sitting watching horror movies as part of my post release recovery, and researching for my 2025 Halloween post, I suddenly realised what I’d like to do next. I really wanted to write about some duel loves of mine, movies and TV plus infection.
Without any expectation of writing another book, all of a sudden I had a structure in my mind, and Don’t Open That Door had began…
You all know how much I am a movie and TV buff, everything from guilty pleasure reality TV, like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, to documentaries, and all genre of film (with the exception of torture porn horror movies, I’m a Blumhouse girlie). Whilst enjoying some down time with Mr Girlymicro, I realised how widely infection is featured in all kinds of different genera settings, some of it was actually pretty good, whilst some of it was really poor. So the first step was to do a whole bunch of research about what kind of examples were out there, by hitting up a bunch of different lists that have been collated by others, internet searches, and sourcing opinions from my movie loving friends. All of which led to the creation of a list of 138 options that needed a review to see if if they were actually linked to infection, and if they were infection based….was the infection content any good.
If you follow me (Girlymicro) on Instagram, you will have probably seen a number of stories that I’ve posted recently linked to movies I’ve been watching with some Infection Prevention and Control/micro commentary:
These have come about whilst I’ve been watching the 138 films/series with Mr Girlymicro to decide which ones make the cut to be included. I’ve watched some awesome films, some like Sinners, weren’t based on infection so couldn’t be included. I have also watched some truly bad movies, I even gave Resident Evil another go, and have spared you all by making sure that it is not included on the list. One of the considerations was that, even if the science wasn’t dreadful, I haven’t included anything that I or Rotten Tomatoes include as being truly horrible. I’m not just saving you on this, but also myself, as I’m having to watch included examples many times as part of the writing. I also felt it was really important to cover infections linked to viral, fungal, parasitic, and bacterial causes, just because they behave so differently and the interventions needed are so different. So the final list for inclusion involves movies and TV series that sit across infectious agents, although viruses are more represented than any other cause.
There are plenty of horror movies on the list, purely because they represent A LOT of the infection genera, but I was surprised at how many options there were outside of horror movies. I also tried to mix up certifications where I could, so that there are some options that everyone might enjoy.
Not everything could be included however, and there were also some exclusion criteria that impacted what I could include. Exclusion criteria included factors such as availability – no point including things that people can’t access, language options – I sadly only speak English so it needed at least English subtitles, and most importantly not based on real life events – this is about fiction.
For inclusion examples also needed to have infection as a central theme. This meant that health dramas could not be included as they only feature infection in some episodes, but at some point I do really want to write something that compares different medical dramas (House, New Amsterdam, Holby City etc) and maybe do a ranking scale….let me know if you think that would be a fun blog post.
Image credit The Red Dress
The reason it felt timely to talk about this today, is that the Biomedical Scientist magazine has been kind enough to do a whole feature on what the new book will look like, with a bit more detail, and some examples of what chapters will look like. It dropped on the 27th March and you can check it out the link here: https://thebiomedicalscientist.net/2026/03/24/infections-films. Also, how awesome is the art work they’ve done, can’t say enough how awesome The Red Dress are.
Whilst writing the article for the Biomedical Scientist and watching the example movies, I couldn’t happen but note how many weird and wonderful things are included as part of the science representation. Things that in my scientific career I rarely if ever encounter, but seem to crop up time and time again in Hollywood depictions of scientific life. I’m collating these for one of the final chapters in the book called ‘Science House of Horrors’ as I find them a bit fascinating. I’ve included some of the ones in the Biomedical Scientist article that I noticed, as well as those sent through as responses from social media, but I’d love to know if you have any others that I should include.
There are other opportunities to get involved though, I have 23 films and series examples, but there is room in the book to cover 25. I’m really keen to get other examples that include fungi, but if there is just something brilliant I haven’t included please let me know. There will also be a chapter called ‘Hall of Fame’ that covers both amazing movies that just don’t have enough infection in them to be included, or ones that were great but not quite as good an example of an infection characteristic as the ones already included. There is also the ‘Hall of Shame’ for examples, such as the TV series The Rain and Resident Evil, where the science is so bad that it is note worthy in itself.
Anyone who drops me an email to elaine@girlymicrobiologist.com and inputs into the House of Horrors, volunteers film examples I’ve missed, or suggests contenders for the ‘Hall of Fame’ or ‘Hall of Shame’, will get their name included in the list of contributors at the back of the book. Science takes a village, so does pulling together a book, and I’m really keen that this feels like it comes from our community. I hope you enjoy the article and I can’t wait to hear from you about your suggestions.
It has not been a great week for science, with many of us being concerned about how the presence of a vaccine denier on the successful ticket to the white house will impact public health initiatives and the quality of science communication in general. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we got here and how, even more than previously, embedding good science into mediums that are routinely accessed by the majority, will be crucial in ensuring the reach of accurate science communication when some of the more standard public health routes are bound to suffer in the coming years.
I think it will be a surprise to none of you that I am a bit of a lover of TV and movies, we’ve also covered a number of book reviews linked to this blog, and I like nothing better than snuggling down with a good book and a cup of Darjeeling. What does any of this have to do with anything? Infection, infection control, and science in general is a huge chunk of my every day, but this isn’t the case for everyone, or even most people. Many people are passive absorbers, meaning that they may not search out information but take on board when they encounter it when going about their lives. This means that the quality of what they encounter may be hugely variable, depending on how and where this happens. I’ve previously talked about the quality of the science in some of the books I enjoy, including the News Flesh series, as well as posting last week about how infection control is represented the Alien movies for Halloween. These are fun posts to do, but it made me think of the most popular movies that are linked to infection out there. How good is the science they represent? and by doing this better, could we support science literacy in general?
IMDB list of Top 25 Virus/Pandemic/Epidemic/Infection Movies
In order to think about this more detail I hit the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) which contains all kinds of lists, including a top 25 of Virus/Pandemic/Epidemic/Infection Movies (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls094715071/)
A Quiet Place (2018) (Girlymicro comment – I don’t know that this should count as it’s an alien invasion film)
Bird Box (2018) (Girlymicro comment – I don’t know that this should count as it’s an unknown enemy film that does not appear to be linked to infection)
Now, I have only seen 16/25 of these, Mr Girlymicro has seen 22/25, so between us we have most of these, so hopefully I’ll be to comment from a position of knowledge on a fair few of these. Before we even start however, as you can see from my commentary on this list, the poor science starts early during the classification of some of these as infection movies, even before we start to talk about the science content of the movie/show itself. Firstly, let’s look at the name of the list = Top 25 Virus/Pandemic/Epidemic/Infection Movies and how it related to the actual definition.
An increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in a specific population and area.
An outbreak, which carries the same definition as an epidemic, but is often used for a more limited geographic area.
The CDC suggests epidemics occur when an agent and susceptible hosts are present in adequate numbers, and the agent can be effectively conveyed from a source to the susceptible hosts. Whereas a pandemic refers to an epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people. The starting epidemic is usually due to a combination of factors including:
A recent increase in amount or virulence of the agent,
The recent introduction of the agent into a setting where it has not been before,
An enhanced mode of transmission so that more susceptible persons are exposed,
A change in the susceptibility of the host response to the agent, and/or
Factors that increase host exposure or involve introduction through new portals of entry
So you can see from the above that a number of movies on this list don’t actually count under the terms linked with to the title. Some of them are alien invasion, some of them are climate change related, and one is even on the topic of bioremediation. Yet there they are on the list.
For some of the others, I’ve already covered their concept during my Zombie post, so I’m not going to go through these in this blog, but focus instead on the ones that fulfill the epidemic based criteria. That said, give me a shout if you’d like a more in-depth zombie comparison post as Train to Busan is an awesome movie, and I’ll accept any excuse to re-watch it.
Let’s start at the very beginning
The first film on the list is Outbreak, a film that came out in 1995, with a description of ‘A team of Army doctors struggle to find a cure for the deadly Motaba virus that was transported from Africa to North America by a white-headed Capuchin monkey and is now spreading quickly throughout a small California town.’
This movie has an amazing cast, but I have to say I don’t want any of them in my team if it came to trying to lock down a high risk infection from an unknown source (vector). In terms of the escape monkey component. You’d think that it is far fetched, and if you’d asked me yesterday I would have said just that, but just today on BBC News there was a story on 43 escaped monkeys from a research lab in the US. So far fetched it may be, but not unheard of, in the case of vector escape.
Even if the vector component may not be quite as unlikely as I’d previously thought, I’d like to say that the rest of the practice in this is highly suspect at times. That said, I do have to admit, that I once went to a talk by a scientist who was looking for viral transmission sources of haemorrhagic fevers in Africa. They showed pictures of the table where they performed autopsies on found deceased animals in the jungle, under the same canopy as the table where they then sat down for dinner. So, as much as the way that high consequence infectious diseases (Ebola etc) are not portrayed as accurately as I’d like, maybe this is a movie of its time, as was that lecture. I really want to enjoy this movie, as it so defined how many of us had our first introduction to outbreaks and what they could mean, but almost 30 years on I don’t think I could recommend the scientific accuracy it portrays. The fact that this is still the top rated movie does not bode well for our scientific literacy hopes.
What a difference a decade makes
Almost 15 years after Outbreak, Contagion was released in 2011. This was the first of the infection movies on this list that I saw after I’d started working within Infection Prevention and Control. Contagion is described as ‘Healthcare professionals, government officials and everyday people find themselves in the midst of a pandemic as the CDC works to find a cure.’ I remember going to see this with a scientist friend and whooping out loud at the explanation of an R0, it gave me so much joy I was shushed by someone else in the cinema, to my ongoing shame.
The CDC defines an R0 as ‘The basic reproduction number (R 0), also called the basic reproduction ratio or rate or the basic reproductive rate, is an epidemiological metric used to describe the contagiousness or transmissibility of infectious agents.’ So, see if you share my joy at how the movie explains what this is, in a way that is so much more approachable than the CDC definition:
This film is not perfect, I clearly remember losing my mind about the glove use at one point, and SPOILER ALERT, it was that poor glove use that meant I was OK with one of the characters dying, but the underlying science is well explained and some of the approaches to containment and vaccination are definitely well routed in evidence. The differences in the quality of embedded science between Outbreak and Contagion are highly noticeable. Part of me wonders if some of the drivers for this heightened quality is linked to awareness of the topic due to the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, or whether this was part of a wider shift towards improved factual grounding in these kinds of movies.
When talking to Mr Girlymicro about this movie, whilst writing this post, he has pointed out that despite my enjoyment he found it an act of ultimate depression which he will not be watching again, and that was when he watched it before the pandemic. It may therefore be, something that triggered my science joy may, in fact, be too depressing or triggering for other reasons to equate to true enjoyment for the general public. This may be an example of something that could risk being dis-engaging by being too close to the truth, despite being second on the IMDB list. Especially in a post pandemic world, this is a line that may prove difficult to walk and prove to be a barrier to movies and TV on this topic being commissioned in the short to medium term.
A completely different movie about primates
Still on viruses and re-visiting our primate theme from Outbreak comes Rise of the Planet of the Apes , which was also a 2011 release. It came out the same year as Contagion, and in the same discussion as Mr Girlymicro stated he would not re-watch that movie, for all the accuracy of it’s science, he would watch Rise repeatedly, and I can testify that in fact he has. Rise has the following description ‘A substance designed to help the brain repair itself gives advanced intelligence to a chimpanzee who leads an ape uprising.’ This is a really interesting addition to the category, as the pandemic aspects of it are mainly actually addressed in the closing credits which demonstrate how a pandemic can spread across the globe, with the film very much focused on the human (and primate) story behind the build up.
This film utilises a viral vector to try to address and revert brain abnormalities linked to Alzheimer’s, with a scientist desperately trying to find a cure for his father, whilst undertaking clinical trials on primates. Now, the clinical trial aspects of this film could not be further from the reality, and any scientist caught undertaking clinical trials and then sneaking the medication to treat their father would at best be fired and at worst been imprisoned. Somehow, because of the focus on the relationships rather than the science, the bad science in this movie bothers me significantly less than that represented in Outbreak, possibly because it feels deliberately portrayed as more like science fiction than science fact. There are some aspects of science to this one that I find interesting and like. The idea of a vaccine or medication behaving differently across species barriers is something that is interesting and could be deeply seated in evidence based plot-lines. I am aware, in this age of post truth and vaccine denial, having a film that focuses on how a vaccine or treatment could end life as we know it may not play into the goals I’m wishing to achieve using popular culture.
Let’s not forget about fungi
In recent years there’s been a rise in the quality of TV and the amount of choice has exploded, especially on streaming and other services. The switch to being able to film big budget TV over shorter film equivalents has provided storytellers with the capacity to really explore bigger and more complex tales that may not have been possible in under 3 hours.
This is last and most recent entry onto the IMDB list and is also the only TV entrant. It is our first step away from the world of viruses, into the world of mycology and all things fungal. The Last of Us came out in 2023, although it’s based on a computer game that was released in 2013. The series is set ‘after a global pandemic destroys civilization, a hardened survivor takes charge of a 14-year-old girl who may be humanity’s last hope.’ This is therefore a great combination of the way different mediums impact popular culture. The plot asks big questions about how far you would go to get a cure for the world, how much is one persons life versus the possible saving of mankind. It’s a real homage to the power that vaccination could hold to impact the world, and how when one isn’t available how desperately people might act in the search for a cure. This is the only entry on the list that came about post pandemic, and I think it is because of that (despite being a parallel to the game) that really resonates on where that desperation comes from, and despite the current vaccine back lash, shows how different outcomes could be.
The very first scenes of the series are a flashback interview from before the pandemic where a scientist talks about what they think the next bit pandemic will be, and I have to say the whole scene brings me unacceptable levels of science joy.
Anyway, this one played so much into my particular ball park that I worked with Liv Gaskill at ID Transmission on a series of articles that talked about the science behind both the Last of Us computer game and the resulting TV series, which pretty closely followed the same plot. This four part series was a real joy to be involved with and so I’m hoping that you might enjoy them too:
I wonder if fungi will be increasingly represented in this genre a) due to the success of The Last of Us and b) as viruses feel a little too close to home these days and so the fungal world might feel like a safer sand box to play around in. This could provide a safe way to have accurate science portrayal, alongside entertainment, as the real prospect of a fungal pandemic is thankfully pretty small.
A shocking oversight
We’ve reached the end of the list, but not the end of the blog post as I want to address an appalling over sight on the IMDB list, and that is the omission of The Strain on the list. This is also a TV series, where season 1 was released in 2014, covered a series of 3 books, and ran for 4 seasons. The series is described as ‘A mysterious viral outbreak with hallmarks of an ancient and evil strain of vampirism ravages the city of New York.’
The strain – episode one, season one
There are many reasons why I love this series (and at some point I should do a vampirism and infection blog to include things like Ultraviolet) is that some of the main characters are epidemiologists linked to the CDC and so some of the science exposition as part of the job based discussions is very pleasing. The other reason I like this series is there is a definite bait and switch, in terms of the causative agent, with all the initial dialogue being linked to your standard viral outbreak, with a gradual reveal that the culprit is actually a parasite. This adds a layer of interest as the approaches to dealing with transmission really start to reflect this, and provide an interesting change as the characters are also forced to pivot and discuss the differences. So, the use of a non-viral infection is not as unique as some of the coverage of The Last of Us may imply. That said, the general science outside of the epidemiology in this definitely becomes more to serve the horror plot than feasibility as time progresses.
Where are the bacteria?
You’ve survived ~3000 words of outbreak talk, covering viruses, fungi and even parasites. You may however be struck by the lack of bacterial cause in any of these listings. I’ve been thinking about this whilst I’ve been writing this blog and I’ve come up with a few thoughts as to why this might be the case:
Too close to home – many people have experienced bacterial infections themselves in their loved ones, sometimes with tragic consequences. It may be hard to therefore suspend belief enough to enjoy the offering. I wonder if this will be true to an extent for viruses now, or whether popular culture will be a safe way to explore collective trauma linked to the pandemic
Too slow – one of the features of many of the scenarios in these movies and shows is that the impact to fast and significant. This an important aspect of making events have real risk and in raising tensions. If accurately portrayed bacterial infections may be too slow in their impact OR the deterioration is so quick there is insufficient time for viewer engagement
Not dramatic enough – bacterial transmission (as described by R0) are not going to be as dramatic as their viral counterparts, so if you subscribe to ‘go big or go home’ this transmission route is probably not the one to drive a sprawling plot-line forward
Too commonly encountered – there are 101 medical shows which have bacterial infections and their consequences featured and so they may be too close to a different genre
The science is pretty hard to get right – as people are more familiar with the topic the less story flexibility there is and the greater the need to not be too jarring for those you are trying to engage. At least in the UK, many people will have been taught about Typhoid Mary and the John Snow Cholera outbreak, and so may have some familiarity. It may also be that these also make people think of the past, and this is not the feel many of these properties are trying to evoke.
So maybe bacteria are a harder sell, although I’d be intrigued to throw a little antibiotic resistance into the mix, or some bacterial toxin related drama and then see what cool things could be done as a result. Maybe that might be my future project 🙂 Let me know if you think that there is a bacterial based film/series that I’ve missed.
Girlymicro 