Contracted (USA, 2013) - Color, Director(s): Eric England
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
[UK: 18]
Approx. 78 min.
Z-rating: 3 stars out of 5
Cheese Factor: 1 stars out of 5
Sticking with the Body Horror theme, Contracted is a body horror and quasi-cautionary tale. Najarra Townsend plays Samantha, a beautiful young lady who's working as a waitress while trying to win a Flower & Floral Competition so she can afford her own place. In the meantime, she's staying with her mother (Caroline Williams), with whom she has a strained relationship, and comes off as an ungrateful brat. Samantha is also in a lesbian relationship with Nikki, who is an insufferable bitch and obviously trying to push her away. For whatever reason, she seems to push everyone who wants to help her away and latches onto Nikki.
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| Check out this dude's drug box |
Everything changes when she's raped at a friend's party by a sick, degenerate morgue attendant who has sex with the stiffs and then handles test tubes without gloves. After work, he goes to parties to drug and rape women. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this guy? Samantha wakes up the next morning with some strange symptoms like a high-pitched ringing in her ears, cramps, and excessive vaginal bleeding. Over time, she starts deteriorating and losing hair, teeth, fingernails... you know, the typical body horror routine. Samantha's mother is concerned about her strange behavior because she had a dark history of drug abuse and depression. By day 3, she's bleeding from both ends and looks like she's decomposing from the inside out. In the most disturbing scene of the entire film, she seduces a guy and maggots crawl out of her cooter in the middle of banging him. I wouldn't have spoiled this scene but I wanted everyone to know what they were getting into. I find that WAY more disgusting than the idea of a Human Centipede.
The lesson here for the ladies is to always pour your own drinks and never put them down. And for guys... don't fuck dead bodies, especially the ones with biohazard toe tags. The reason I call this a quasi-cautionary tale is because the "lessons" are just thinly veiled excuses to show a bunch of disturbing body horror setpieces. Samantha wakes up with blood coming out of every orifice on her body and she's forced to go into work so someone can find her fingernail in their salad. Nevermind going to a doctor, there's no one to cover her shift. Contagious? Who cares, make this salad without wearing any gloves.
Nudity: There isn't any nudity but this is the most unsexy movie I've ever seen. I'm actually glad there isn't any nudity.
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| Damn. |
Gore: There's a ton of blood and disturbing imagery. I've seen some of the most violent and disgusting movies ever made. Eyeballs stabbed with screwdrivers, tongues stretched and peeled with potato peelers, necrophilia, and pseudo-snuff films. Despite all that, I still found this movie a little hard to watch. There isn't anything excessively gory or violent but it's the way some of the scenes are presented that make it particularly cringeworthy. For example, Samantha uses the toilet and it looks like someone had a coat hanger abortion in the bowl after she gets up.
Awesome: I don't know if I would call this movie awesome, effective is probably the word I would use since it's not a very pleasant experience. As if having an STD isn't scary enough, having things falling out of your body is absolutely terrifying. Watching as this beautiful girl deteriorates is a lot like watching a fragile flower wither. (Har har) The ending makes it a different kind of movie altogether disguised as a body horror. I don't want to give it away but it makes this movie seem like a prequel to something else. There is a sequel that I haven't seen it yet, so I'm curious to see where it goes from here.