Contracted is a low-tier B-movie with only really one thing that works about it, the performance from lead actress Najarra Townsend, who is perfectly serviceable as Samantha, the problem is she's a decent enough actress surrounded by a poor cast and a bad script. The film has some odd symbolism that's somewhat homophobic and victim blaming as the inciting incident involves Samantha contracting a terminal sexually transmitted disease that turns her into a zombie because essentially she's a lesbian who is date raped by a man,
why this happens is not entirely clear.
Characters decisions make absolutely no sense,
Samantha tries to go back to work while she is literally rotting,
her hair is falling out and her eyes are filled with blood,
the characters around her also downplay just how sick she looks and weirdly everyone seems pissed off with her,
even her doctor while examining her has this shitty attitude as if this is the thousandth walking corpse he's had to deal with that day.
It doesn't really make any logical thematic sense either and these are obviously all conscious decisions on the part of the filmmakers, so I'm left thinking either they're really, really bad writers or they're incredibly homophobic and anti-women.
A lot of the imagery as well is meant as an assault on womanhood,
extreme vaginal bleeding and in the last act of the film her vagina becomes maggot infested, you don't see it, but it's gratuitous,
its not like in Carrie where this type of imagery is used to tell a coming of age story, her powers developing alongside her body, etc etc, its just there because they thought it'd be gross.
Anti-sex and anti-promiscuity are not new themes in horror,
we've seen it them before in films like "Teeth" or the vastly overrated "It Follows" but at least the aforementioned films knew what commentary they were trying to make on sex,
or perhaps this film does and it's just a nasty vulgar message,
personally I think it was just poor writing.
The only other aspect of the film which I thought was good in concept was the idea of following a "patient zero" prior to an outbreak without the audience knowing that that's where things are headed, that would make a good film and be pretty easy to pull off.
So in closing, no, I don't recommend you watch contracted anymore than I would recommend that you go out and get herpes.
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