Contracted: 19 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

Okay, let's face it, some horror movies are just bad.  It's not that they're not trying hard enough, it's that they're trying to hard to stick to one aspect while neglected the others.  They're unbalanced.  It's impossible to make a film that rests solely on it's gore great if you don't make the characters relate-able.  Some films are just all over the place and the lack of focus ruins them.  Such was the case with Contracted.

Contracted is a low budget indie horror telling us the tale of  Samantha who gets drugged at a party and sleeps with an unidentifiable stranger.  At first assuming she's contracted a veneral disease, it progresses into something far worse.  Over the course of three days Sam gets sicker and sicker but continues trying to hide her illness from everyone around her until it's absolutely impossible and her world falls into utter shit.

This movie had two problems going for it: a severe lack of balance, brought on by unbelievable dialogue and situations as well as having a cast of completely unlikable characters.  As I watched the film with my friends the only thing that caused us any bit of recoil were the make up effects and shock gags, but overall, we were completely unimpressed with the characters childish dialogue and situations.

The way I see it, you don't care about someone's death in a film when they've been nothing but a dick the entire film long.  Such is the problem with the lead.  She's selfish, spoiled, and contains zero empathy for anyone else around her.  I get that we're supposed to be worried about her and that she's the victim of the story, but ultimately she brings almost EVERYTHING afterward upon herself willingly.  More than once my friend Patrick yelled: "Seriously?  GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL!" and we all laughed, but were in complete agreement.  Have you ever heard of anyone who's veins are turning black over the course of a day to NOT go to an emergency room?  To make it worse, all she does is go to a clinic, where the Doctor seems more interested in getting her to tell him that she had a one night stand than following up on her actual symptoms.

I'm all for suspending disbelief, but you can't try and create a story set in realism and not be scientifically realistic on every level.  To make some lemonade out of this situation, the make up effects were quite cringe inducing and I don't know a single person who isn't grossed out when maggots fall from bodily cavities.  Sadder still, the actors aren't bad, they just had terrible dialogue, not terrible like The Room but still unbelievable.  It didn't help that not one of them was likable in any sense of the word.

1 out of 5 skulls.