There's a lot of really bad, dismissive reviews of this movie, but I'm going to be a dissenting voice. Overall, I actually liked it. I thought it got off to a rather slow start. I also thought that the story burdened Samantha with a unnecessary backstory (the whole unhappy lesbian relationship thing) that just got in the way of what was really important. It was almost as if the writers just thought, "oh. It's 2013. We have to have a gay angle in this." Well, they didn't need that angle, and I found it distracting. Those two weaknesses aside, though, I thought the story was sometimes frightening, often unsettling and definitely disturbing in the end, although the end was a bit of a problem as well, that I'll get to in a bit.
Samantha was portrayed by an actress named Najarra Townsend. She seems from her filmography to have been around for a while, but I've never come across her before, and I have to say I was impressed. She did a good job in the role, portraying Samantha as she gradually falls apart. That's the basic storyline. That slow opening has Samantha at a party, without her girlfriend Nikki (an irritating character who added little of substance to the story) who ends up having unprotected sex against her will with a strange man. The man is later said to be wanted by the police on some sort of childhood molestation charge if I remember correctly. From the moment of that encounter on, Samantha begins to change. She suffers cramping and severe bleeding, she develops what appears to be a rash, her eyes begin to turn red, her skin turns pale, and - most unsettling - her teeth, fingernails and hair begin to fall out. The doctor she goes to is mystified, other than believing that it's some sort of sexually transmitted disease. Her mother and her friends see the changes in her but can't convince her to get help, other than consulting the one doctor who can't figure this out. Eventually, Samantha becomes violent and homicidal. Townsend did a seriously good job with this character's evolution. I was impressed.
Irritating and unnecessary backstory aside, I was really enjoying this movie right up until the end. Then the ending left me a bit unfulfilled. It explained nothing. Samantha gets in a car accident, and as her mother and the police appear on the scene, she stumbles out of the car, flailing wildly, and apparently attacks her mother, although by then the screen has gone blank. Yes, we can take guesses. If I were a gambling man - I'd say she became a zombie? (There is, after all, a bit of a zombie fixation these days in both movies and on the TV screen.) That seems to make the most sense to me, but I would have liked the movie to continue on a little bit to give a clearer explanation of what happened to Samantha. Sometimes an open-ended ending that leaves a lot to the viewers' imagination works. In this, it really didn't. It left me thinking that we must be being set up for a sequel, and, indeed, I see that there's "Contracted: Phase 2" in production. I'm not sure about a sequel. I don't really know where it could go that this one didn't, other than making the disease more widespread. I'd have just liked things tied up in this one movie, I think. So the weak ending that was too obviously a sequel set-up detracted from this a bit. Still, it was an enjoyable movie, and I'd rate it as a 7/10.
Samantha was portrayed by an actress named Najarra Townsend. She seems from her filmography to have been around for a while, but I've never come across her before, and I have to say I was impressed. She did a good job in the role, portraying Samantha as she gradually falls apart. That's the basic storyline. That slow opening has Samantha at a party, without her girlfriend Nikki (an irritating character who added little of substance to the story) who ends up having unprotected sex against her will with a strange man. The man is later said to be wanted by the police on some sort of childhood molestation charge if I remember correctly. From the moment of that encounter on, Samantha begins to change. She suffers cramping and severe bleeding, she develops what appears to be a rash, her eyes begin to turn red, her skin turns pale, and - most unsettling - her teeth, fingernails and hair begin to fall out. The doctor she goes to is mystified, other than believing that it's some sort of sexually transmitted disease. Her mother and her friends see the changes in her but can't convince her to get help, other than consulting the one doctor who can't figure this out. Eventually, Samantha becomes violent and homicidal. Townsend did a seriously good job with this character's evolution. I was impressed.
Irritating and unnecessary backstory aside, I was really enjoying this movie right up until the end. Then the ending left me a bit unfulfilled. It explained nothing. Samantha gets in a car accident, and as her mother and the police appear on the scene, she stumbles out of the car, flailing wildly, and apparently attacks her mother, although by then the screen has gone blank. Yes, we can take guesses. If I were a gambling man - I'd say she became a zombie? (There is, after all, a bit of a zombie fixation these days in both movies and on the TV screen.) That seems to make the most sense to me, but I would have liked the movie to continue on a little bit to give a clearer explanation of what happened to Samantha. Sometimes an open-ended ending that leaves a lot to the viewers' imagination works. In this, it really didn't. It left me thinking that we must be being set up for a sequel, and, indeed, I see that there's "Contracted: Phase 2" in production. I'm not sure about a sequel. I don't really know where it could go that this one didn't, other than making the disease more widespread. I'd have just liked things tied up in this one movie, I think. So the weak ending that was too obviously a sequel set-up detracted from this a bit. Still, it was an enjoyable movie, and I'd rate it as a 7/10.