Movie Review: ‘CONTRACTED’

When your film opens on a morgue attendant having sex with a corpse, that’s when you know you’ve got a truly special film, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Who is this necrophile? No clue. The only clues to his identity are a tattoo on his finger and that he’s constantly out of focus. This blurry pervert shows up to a party and strikes up a conversation with a charming young lesbian named Samantha. How do we know she’s a lesbian? Because all the other characters won’t shut the fuck up about it. We see Samantha at many points in the party get on her phone to try and reach her mysterious girlfriend Nikki who seems to want nothing to do with her. More than once the phrase “not working with the right equipment” is used to reference that fact that she no longer accepts penises.

So while the party sequence builds up the fact that she’s a gay woman by barraging us with innuendo and having a scene where she shoots down Riley, the classically good looking, non-threatening bland male lead that’s always had a soft spot for her, it immediately brings that all down when Samantha bangs the creepy mortician in his van. Following this encounter we’re treated to a title card that reads “DAY 1.” Day 1 of what? Again, no clue. This film is very light on explanations.

Contracted takes place over three days. Over the course of the film Samantha goes from “feeling funny” to a complete mutant. This is where the strengths of the film lie. The transformation Samantha goes through is very gradual, and the makeup team responsible did an excellent job. The film derives its scares from really cringe-worthy scenes of body horror. Scenes of hair falling out in the shower, fingernails popping out, eyes becoming blood red are all standard body horror clichés that deliver a good squirm. Then the film kicks into gear when it starts to get strongly vaginal. Samantha sits down on the toilet and unleashes a bucket of blood, just a crimson tide that not even the strongest tampon could handle. Then she has sex with Riley. At this point, I think writer/director Eric England needs to go to a dictionary and remind himself what a lesbian is. As soon as Riley sticks it in, a torrent of maggots falls from her genitals. That’s new.

But what could all this be a metaphor for? Could it be AIDS/STDs? Could it be heroin addiction? Could it be her blossoming into womanhood? Could it be she’s losing her mind over her big flower competition? Seriously, there’s a flower-growing competition subplot that goes nowhere and has no bearing on the plot at all. It’s actually none of these, but props for the filmmakers throwing in enough red-herrings to throw us all off the trail.

The scary truth is that she is a zombie. That’s the big twist. After three days of doctor visits not being able to tell her anything, she stumbles out of her car and eats her mom’s face. There’s no big buildup to it either, that’s the last thirty seconds of the movie. The zombie-infection-as-an-STD angle is pretty cool and I haven’t seen it before, but the handling of the concept is really clunky.

The movie’s weaknesses are its dumb characters and their incredibly terrible chemistry. Samantha is supposedly in love with Nikki, but in the only scenes they share, Nikki couldn’t give a shit about Samantha. Nikki is the reason Samantha is a lesbian (by this film’s standards) and they have no chemistry together. Samantha also fights with her mom over the stupidest things. She asks Samantha to eat dinner with her like a real family and she lashes out at her mom for enforcing arbitrary rules.

There’s also no explanation of what’s going on at all in the film. One of Samantha’s friend’s from the party tells her that the man she slept with and contracted this virus from is wanted by the police. For what? Hell if I know. I’m really conflicted as to whether this works for the film or not. On one hand, we experience everything from Samantha’s point of view, and it feels like we’re right along there with her. On the other hand, everything in the movie is completely ambiguous; it feels more like an outline for a film than a full movie.

All in all, Contracted isn’t a horrible flick. There are some good squeamish scares in here but they’re surrounded by a terrible script, characters that shouldn’t really be friends with each other. It’s a really gross, dirty film, and I feel like I’ve contracted something just watching it.