Contracted is a film franchise that makes you squirm. Is that just a rash … or are my genitals rotting? These films aren’t just to be avoided by the squeamish, any with even the slightest amount of hypochondria should avoid them at all costs. If you suffer … from anything, you’ll be sorry you were curious.
Keys to an unsuccessful sequel:
- Make sure to use the same crappy B-actors who weren’t killed off in the first one
- Change nothing about the basic plot, but arbitrarily change the timeline
- Make the lead exactly as stupid as the last lead
- In fact, make sure every single cast member is a complete moron
- Pad the conclusion with an irrelevant fight
- Have the story continue exactly day of the last one ending even though it’s clear years have passed in real life
- New writer
- New director
- Make another stupid-ass Contracted
In 2013, D-level talent Eric England wrote and directed a bad horror film, Contracted. In the film, some co-ed hipster gets wasted at a party and pays a heavy price for her indulgence when she’s raped and contracts a bio-hazardous sexual disease that devours her body in three days. Mostly marked by the woman’s inability to recognize the fact that something is seriously wrong and she needs immediate attention, Contracted was effective in conveying disgust and delivering a subtle message of prudishness. Two years later, another director picked up that scaly, worm-ridden baton and ran directly into a brick wall with the sequel Contracted: Phase II.
Contracted: Phase II picks up at day four with Riley (Matt Mercer) seeking medical help. You might remember Riley as the joker from the first film who breaks free of the friend zone only to find his … intimate interior experience, so-to-speak, is maggot-riddled. I’m not kidding. Naturally, he wants to make sure everything’s working ok. Sure. Smart move. And then he skips out of the office with a mere blood test. Riley doesn’t even let a medical professional see the puss-filled gashes in his shoulder where his now-deceased sexual partner embedded a finger nail.
Dudes, if you’re not gonna take your own film seriously, I can stop right here. Let me spell this out: Riley had sex, yesterday, with a woman so grotesque there was obviously something seriously wrong with her. She died of a sexually transmitted disease shortly after their encounter. She Contracted her sexually-transmitted disease only three days prior. So the clock is ticking and Riley knows it, or at least ought to, and all he wants is a blood test. In fact, given the opportunity to have a medical professional examine possible side-effects of the disease, he instead hides the evidence and bolts from the examination room. I don’t even know where to go with this; it almost doesn’t matter what you show me next. This movie is STUPID.
I want to say the film got better, but it didn’t. It follows the same predictable path as the first – Riley rapidly devolves and spends his energies doing anything but seeking medical attention – that’s right, make sure to infect every single person you encounter, pal. However, neither the make-up, nor the gross factor is as intense in the sequel. This letdown is compensated by a ridiculous angle where patient zero is suddenly a doomsday anarchist trying to infect the world.
I suppose I did enjoy the return to the drug dealer’s house. Not because the scene was good. 
It wasn’t. But because the actor who plays the dealer (Charley Koontz) obviously lost weight between films. So when he stresses that Riley needs to go to a hospital, I expected Riley to return with, “Huh. Well you seem to have lost 20 pounds in 2 days. Are you sure I’m the one who needs hospitalization?”
The Contracted franchise didn’t have a great deal going for it in the first place … and managed to piss it all away in the sequel. With the shame factor gone immediately and the ick factor sadly underplayed, this is just a really, really bad horror film. Contracted: Phase II staved off a shutout with a hilarious folksy pop dirge played at a wake. If not for the guitar-laden idiot, this film is a zero across the board.
♪Whoa, a hot bummer night held big regret
Caught something from my baby’s “pet”
I need you to ease my dread
Gimme good words ‘fore I’m dead
Doctor, doctor, no time to lose
I’ve got a disease that I must infuse
Don’t bother tryin’ to strap me down
I’ve got a bad choice I must abuse♫
Not Rated, 78 Minutes
D: Josh Forbes
W: Craig Walendziak
Genre: Disgusting sequel
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The director, maybe. I don’t know.
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Hypochondriacs
♪ Parody inspired by “Bad Case Of Lovin’ You”
