CONTRACTED (2013)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Eric England
Writer:       Eric England
Producer:  Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, Eric England
Stars:     Najarra Townsend, Alice Macdonald, Matt Mercer, Katie Stegeman, Charley Koontz, Simon Barrett, Dave Holmes, Caroline Williams

Review Score:

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Summary:

A troubled young girl begins mutating after she contracts an unidentifiable STD.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Morgue attendant BJ has sex with a corpse marked by a biohazard toe tag. Struggling in a relationship with lesbian girlfriend Nikki, Samantha England goes to a party hosted by her friend Alice. After dodging the advances of her ex-boyfriend Riley, Samantha gets drunk and has sex with BJ in his car.

Day 1 – Samantha argues with her mother, who disapproves of Samantha’s lifestyle. She also has lunch with Nikki. Samantha begins showing the first signs of an illness.

Day 2 – Samantha wakes to find blood in her panties and a rash on her midsection. Alice calls and tells her that the police are looking for a man from the party. Riley shows up at the restaurant where Samantha works as a waitress. Samantha gets a sharp pain in her ears and starts bleeding again. She visits a doctor who tells her that he sees signs only of a head cold and a rash. Samantha visits Nikki before meeting Alice, who notices that Samantha now has a bloody eye. A maggot falls from between Samantha’s legs and she loses a tooth while brushing before bed.

Day 3 of 3 – Her mother sees that Samantha is getting sick, but she refuses help. One of her fingernails falls off in a patron’s salad at work. Alice tells her that the police are looking for anyone who may have come in contact with BJ at the party, but Samantha reveals nothing. The doctor says there is nothing he can do until the test results reveal the nature of Samantha’s illness. Samantha visits her former drug dealer Zain and snorts cocaine. Alice shows up and Samantha finally admits that she had sex with BJ. After another confrontation with her mother, Samantha tries reconciling with Nikki. Having found out about the infidelity from Alice, Nikki admits that she is seeing someone else. Samantha goes into a rage and strangles Nikki. She then goes to see Alice. After coughing up blood while attempting to seduce Alice, Samantha ends up biting Alice’s neck and killing her. Samantha calls Riley and seduces him as well. Riley feels a tingling sensation while having sex with Samantha and discovers blood and maggots coming from her vagina. When he goes to shower, he finds Alice’s body. Samantha flees in her car and passes out behind the wheel. When she comes to, she appears to have mutated into a zombie. As the police try containing the accident scene, Samantha’s mother calls for her daughter to come to her. Samantha attacks her mother.

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Review:

Cutting scars on her inside forearms.  Her disapproving mother for a roommate.  Drug addiction.  An ex-boyfriend.  An ex-girlfriend.  Samantha is coping with enough baggage for a half-dozen average young women working dead-end waitress jobs.  And three quick days is all it takes for things to go from already bad to incredibly worse.

Her head swirling over her sexual orientation, the stress of acceptance into a flower competition, and her troubled past, Samantha adds to her cocktail of confusion by carelessly mixing alcohol with a poor choice in potential sex partners.  BJ appears to be a morgue attendant with a proclivity for molesting the merchandise, even the ones wearing toe tags with a biohazard symbol.  But Samantha does not know that.  Thanks to a roofied red Solo cup, she is barely aware of anything at all.

The morning holds opportunities for second guesses.  Especially once bloody maggots start falling from between Samantha’s legs.  An unplanned pregnancy and hepatitis are suddenly two far more preferable punishments for a momentary lapse in judgment.

“Contracted” is smaller-scale body horror that is mostly effective for its self-contained story.  The drawback is that this depiction is so insular that not pouncing on the chance to exploit broader contagion fears becomes a missed opportunity.

Samantha is a drag.  She is cute, liked by her friends, and has been struggling with a few bad cards dealt from life’s hand.  Pulling out a shovel to move generous heaps of sympathy in her direction should be easy enough.  But Samantha proves to be an irritating twit instead of an unfortunate soul.

Even after fingernails fall off and bloody clumps repeatedly plop into toilets, Samantha remains in denial about her situation far longer than is reasonable.  Mother notices her daughter looking sickly and Samantha’s response is a sarcastic, “thanks mom.”  Her friend sees her bloodied eyeball and Samantha sloughs it off as “I think there is something caught in it.”  For her boss, that lie evolves into an explanation of pink eye.  And when her ex-boyfriend confronts Samantha point blank about her encounter with BJ at the previous party, she exclaims, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The girl is literally mutating into a creature and she acts as though the condition might go away on its own.  There is some understanding that her character is afraid of the truth pushing away her relationships.  But it makes even less sense when she evades the impartial doctor’s questions just the same, refusing to admit to even having sex.  Samantha never comes across as helpless because she refuses it every time help is offered.

Simon Barrett’s mysterious patient zero is given a terrific introduction.  Writer/director Eric England purposefully makes “BJ” a faceless carrier who is depicted either from behind or out of focus.  It’s a smart technique for making the character non-specific without adding more creepiness than necessary by never showing what he actually looks like.

This same detail implies that “Contracted” wants its tale to be a universally identifiable experience.  These people could be anybody and this could happen to anyone.  Yet the way Samantha keeps herself beyond arm’s length erects a quarantine-grade barrier between the film and the viewer.  Her situation is relatable while her reactions are not.  Sabotaging her shot at empathy then becomes collateral damage.

Samantha is a waitress.  She prepares food for the customers, breathes in everyone’s faces, and drinks from public glassware.  Strangely, no one else appears to be at risk of contagion given the circumstances.

The best body horror induces squirms through a relatable fear of sickness.  “Contracted” excels at depicting the escalating danger that Samantha is in without ever transferring those viral scares onto the audience.  The infection is happening to her alone.  Everyone else, characters and viewers alike, is merely observing safely from the outside.

The quieter tone explodes with sudden surprises during the climax.  Shock value is added, but these developments border on betrayal of the believability created until that point.  Although the effort is well executed, the strong starting premise suggests that the takeaway feeling should be of fingernails wanting to tear at an uncontrollable itch under the skin.  Instead, the feeling settles on accepting “Contracted” as being good enough for what it is, which is an experience too passive to register a lasting tremor.

Review Score:  60

Click here for Culture Crypt's review of the sequel, "Contracted: Phase II."

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