Monday, October 3, 2016

2016 October Horror Challenge #7: "Contracted: Phase 2"



This is a sequel to the movie "Contracted," which was a highlight of my horror challenge last year, definitely one of my favorites. It was a nasty, mean, gory little flick and I loved it, so when I heard there was a sequel coming, I was excited.  It came out and got some pretty bad reviews, even from people who liked the original, but I was still hopeful.

My hopefulness continued through a pretty solid opening sequence and even through the first third of the movie before I started hearing warning bells go off in  my head.  See, one of the things that made the first movie so good was that it does along quickly without trying to come up with an annoying back story to over explain and ruin everything for us.  It's like the people who made the first movie got together and said "hey, you know what this movie needs? A stupid, preachy, long and boring plot origin story! Quick, to the batmobile, we need to film a sequel!". Dudes, did you not even pay attention to what made your first movie so good?

I can't fault the acting here.  The main character here was not my favorite character in the first movie, but I guess he's OK here, and he'ss much smarter than the dumbass move he made in the first movie. At least he realizes right away that something is wrong. There is plenty of gore and nastiness here too, and as with the original movie, it's well done and icky.

It's that damn stupid over-explainey plot crap.  It keeps getting in my way whenever I try to remember all the good things about this movie. Unlike, say, [rec]2, which Iproved me wrong by becoming even better when it expanded on its story, this one just gets ridiculous. I find myself rolling my eyes into the next century while I'm trying to watch the screen.  It's a shame, too, because there's a lot of good here (I'm never going into a gas station bathroom again). Far be it from me to discourage a movie from trying to have a plot, but if it's going to be this silly, perhaps it's better to leave us in the dark.

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