“Might possibly be one of the strongest PSAs for practicing safe sex!”
One night stands and nonconsensual sex can be deadly, and that point comes across very strongly in the body horror drama, Contracted
THE PLOT
Samantha (Najarra Townsend), trying to get over her recent breakup with her girlfriend, attends a party with a few friends. She is clearly in a down mood and not really into the party. Her friends Alice (Alice Macdonald) and Zain (Charley Koontz) offer her drinks and drugs to try to cheer her up, but all that does is heavily intoxicate her. As the party goes on, she is approached by a mysterious man named BJ (Simon Barrett). He tries to make a pass at her, but is rejected due to the fact that she is a lesbian. To try to make the situation less awkward, he offers her a drink that seems to be mixed with some sort of date rape drug. Next thing Samantha knows, she is in the back seat of his car and barely aware that she is being raped. What makes this situation even worse is that BJ is hiding a potentially deadly secret.
As the days go on, Samantha starts to experience a strange sickness coming upon her. She becomes extremely sensitive to sound, her health and appearance start to deteriorate, and she becomes more and more aggressive towards everyone. After much hesitation, she finally decides to see a doctor, who initially suspects that she may have contracted some sort of STD, but it clearly could be something much worse.
SHOULD YOU SEE IT?
This film is, at times, not easy to watch. It contains some disturbing and possibly some controversial subject matter. I thought it was pretty good myself. It’s not perfect, and some of the choices made by the characters can definitely infuriate some viewers. What made this movie great was the increased tension with Samantha’s condition increasingly getting worse. It kept me on the edge of my seat, just wondering what would happen next, and it left a bit of a cliffhanger leading up to the sequel. Contracted
