Contracted

So, movie review time. I had been doing this on Facebook, and I might well post a version of this there, because I am a member of an awesome horror movie group, its not as active as it once was, but when the place is active it is second to none. So, for your consideration, a movie called “Contracted”.

Now when I was looking through the channel listings I saw this movie pop up, read the description and figured it was a clone of It Follows which I didn't care for. Hey, It Follows is AIDS people, its AIDS. Seriously, its like the worlds worst PSA against having sex, of any kind. So I see the description of the movie, and given how little else was grabbing my attention, I changed the channel and get met with a gratuitous belly button shot, and hair falling out... Well, its evident that I missed something, because a large wad of this young ladies hair fell out, and she has what appears to be the absolute worst case scenario of terminal Pink Eye I have ever seen in anything alive. The blue veins popping out everywhere is just... So, here we are kids, don't have sex, ever, and I mean that. Its apparent from these two movies that sex is bad, reproduction is evil.

So, as we progress this one has a brain, she's going to the doctor... No she isn't, her boss called and is demanding she come to work, which she does. Hilarity ensues as, “Oh waiter, there is a fingernail in my salad.” Yeah, I don't have to spell this out, really I don't, its painfully obvious here. So, eventually we find ourselves at the doctor, and he is apparently tripping balls, because whatever she has, he doesn't know, and he advises her to stay away from people, which she does, at a bar. Mom is a bible thumper, and calls the priest to talk to her, wow, her teeth, and poor poor liver. Well I can say that this movie isn't playing around, its moving right along. This is escalating PDQ, I mean she has one eye yellowed over, bruises everywhere, and appears to have lost several other fingernails. Oh man, her face is rotting off. At this point, I think we all know what infamously popular television show this movie could serve as a prequel to. Alright, my general train of thoughts are as follows.

Surprisingly I am not a huge zombie movie fan. The genre that started out pretty well only has so many ways of telling the same story. Survivors roaming the countryside (or a mall) trying to find sanctuary from ravenous monsters that seek to eat them. Some shows and movies (even some video games), tend to do well with it. The Walking Dead did well, Night of the Living Dead (and its sequel), The Last of Us did well for themselves, despite many of the limitations with the Zombie Horror genre, but that is because they all choose a specific aspect. The Walking Dead and The Last of Us deal with the remnants of humanity, just struggling to survive against the zombie hordes and humans with ill intent. Night of the Living Dead and its sequel tend to play everything off for laughs, focusing not on horror as much as its absurd comedy. Contracted is a weird one, we don't see hordes of zombies roaming the countryside, we only see one, and the movie tells her story. Now, rather than rewrite this review, I waited and watched the movie a second time from the beginning. She was raped, and yeah, the guy drugged her to do it, and she has subsequently passed it along to another guy, while the prick who has it is apparently alive and well (established by the sequel). Now, I did halfway enjoy the movie the first go around. It's different, we don't often see the very beginning of the zombie apocalypse. By beginning, I mean patient zero. It was a decent enough flick that I'll hunt around and see if I can find the sequel, and if that is fairly entertaining I will watch the third which is due out at the end of October. The thing is, this movie is more of the gross out variety, not so much guts, but gore and some fairly uncomfortable viewing.