20140416: Horror Review--Contracted

Contracted

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 84 minutes.
2. IMDB: 5.2/10.0 from 3,231 audience ratings.  Spoken word is English.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 50% on the meter; 32% liked it from 1,293 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.9/5.0 from 240,535 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Eric England.
6. Starring: Najarra Townsend as Samantha, Caroline Williams as Sam's Mom, Alice Macdonald as Alice, Katie Stegeman as Nikki, Matt Mercer as Riley, Charley Koontz as Zain, Ruben Pia as Doctor.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Samantha, a lesbian coming off of drugs and out of a relationship with Nikki, gets drunk enough at a party to accept a drink from a stranger.  Ouch, not a good idea.  She has an anonymous one night stand with a man.


2. Her hangover lasts quite a while, and she gets some unexplained bruising and bleeding.  She tries to go back to her waitress job at a posh restaurant, but hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, and more bleeding interrupt this.  She gets to a doctor, who prescribes a few things for her ear and vaginal problems.


3. Her condition continues to degenerate.  Alice from the party gets visits from the police, who are asking many questions about the party.  Her doctor switches theories, from a head cold and a mild sexual area irritation, to hardcore STD.  Plus, "we'll have to wait for the lab results."


4. Samantha's mother thinks Sam's problems come from a return to drug usage.  Sam shows her otherwise.  Sam gets the art grant she wanted; soon after, she throws that away.  She tries to get back with Nikki, but she's too ugly for Nikki to give her anything but contempt.


5. Things continue to get worse for anyone near Sam, including Sam.


3. Conclusions
1. Subgenre: body horror.  No supernatural anything.  No techno anything.
2. One line summary: Strong vorticity in this personal down-the-toilet film.
3. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 3/10 The film looked like the equipment used for filming was quite good, but the skill of the operator was, to be charitable, incomplete.  An alternate view of the bad visuals is that this is a failed attempt at an 'art' film.


2. Sound: 7/10 Good for reinforcing creepiness and paranoia.


3. Acting: 0/10 What acting?


4. Screenplay: 1/10 The scenes with the physician were unbelievable: a pelvic exam with jeans fastened?  The worm-like things dropping out of Sam's vaginal area were some sort of clue, perhaps.  In terms of story, Sam's life was bad, then she had a one night stand after being drugged, then her life got worse.  The primary failure here was that none of the characters were engaging, and the plot was simple, monotonous, and boring.