January: Samantha (Contracted)
This month’s essay is brought to you by 2 lbs. of Reese’s miniatures leftover from the holidays, as well as a crippling lack of motivation to engage in anything remotely resembling productivity.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS, STOLEN FROM NETFLIX: “After a one-night-stand, a young woman becomes alarmingly ill – but what she thinks is a sexually transmitted disease turns out to be far worse.”
CHARACTER EXAMINED: Samantha, the protagonist.
WHY?: Because, if we were to examine this film as a whole and summarize it in a four-sentence interaction between Samantha and the audience, that shizz would go down as follows...
Audience: “Don’t do that.”
Samantha: “I’M GONNA DO IT.”
Audience: “Samantha, no.”
Samantha: “SAMANTHA YESSSSSSSSSS.”
Ahhhhh. A horror film about STDs… I’ve shuddered to think about such a thing coming to fruition ever since my 9th grade health class, where a guest lecturer fluent in the language of “IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU, TOO” came in and cast a 5 ft. tall image of someone’s unidentifiable groin bits – ravaged by what I believe was a particularly aggressive plume of multicolored genital warts – onto a projector screen. Some things cannot be unseen. Some things burrow so far into your subconscious that you can successfully conjure up the details almost 10 years later on such a profoundly minute scale that police sketch artists could draw it up and then promptly projectile vomit, à la The Exorcist, once they realize what they have just committed to paper memory.
Similar horrendous mental imagery – in the form of a grotesque body horror plot – is what I anticipated from Contracted, and while this isn’t quite what I received (which, you know, HALLELUJAH), I wasn’t exactly pleased with what I DID get. Understandably, this is conflicting. And thus, after deciding to view it a second time to write this, I still have no idea what to think of this movie because I don’t even know what I wanted from it to begin with.
But, I digress – this isn’t about me, or even us… This is about good ol’ Samantha…
Like all ill-fated horror protagonists, poor Sam has a prelude, and it’s important that we gauge this beginning to its fullest potential, uncovering why this horror protagonist spends at least 50% of the movie being… Well, rude. Rude is the word I’m going to use here, for lack of a more appropriate term. Sam is hella rude… And this is precisely why I’ve decided to write an entire essay about a character in a movie of which I’m not particularly fond, as I’m floored at the magnitude of bizarre interactions and situations that unfold within Contracted as Sam grows more and more ill, as well as what this says about the way we perceive the film. Why choose to make your protagonist so unlikeable as the film progresses? Was the film even meant to be taken seriously in the first place, or should we be laughing? What does the film say about the way we view horror cinema and our society? (Fear not – we’re going to briefly table the ponderous stuff and go back to Sam now.)
That being said, Sam doesn’t begin her harrowing journey as the human embodiment of rudeness, proving that whatever this hot mess of a fictional genital nightmare is, it doesn’t just ravage Sam’s reproductive organs; that is to say, like syphilis, it also affects the brain. Except, instead of resulting in utter craziness, it seems to affect the parts of the brain that handle common sense and basic human interaction, apparently causing the infected to treat everyday situations as though everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. Let’s rewind.
NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA VAGINAL SYMBOLISM!!! No, really, the film begins with a shot of shriveled, greyish-pink flower petals drifting ominously against a black background. This moment of symbolic foreshadowing is then juxtaposed with a shot of healthy, fuchsia orchids being sprayed with a water bottle. Meanwhile, somewhere in the universe, the ghost of Georgia O’Keeffe just became devastatingly confused – one of her eyebrows is quirked and twitching, and she’s clearly intrigued, but she’s also pretty skeeved out and continues to insist that they’re just flowers and that nothing is even remotely Freudian.
Anywho, following that, we greet a faceless character (not literally faceless – can you imagine?! “HOWDY, Y’ALL. I CAN HAZ NO FACE SKIN” – but his face is blurred so that we cannot get a good glimpse of the guy) who believes that the ideal way to spend a Friday evening is to engage in a lovely bout of necrophilia in a morgue before triumphantly gallivanting off to a party, where, coincidentally, we first encounter our protagonist.
Sam is distraught. She just kinda-sorta broke things off with her girlfriend, and it doesn’t seem like it was a very amicable split. After a few awkward interactions with some friends at the party (Riley, who hits on her; Alice, who forces drinks down her gullet; and Zane, who offers her drugs and kind of tips us off to the fact that Sam is a recovering addict. Get better friends, Sam… Get better friends), she downs an unclear number of drinks before drunk-dialing said ex-girlfriend, clumsily breaking a glass in the kitchen, and then accepting a drink from our BFF, the faceless necrophiliac (who shall, henceforth, be referred to as “FN”), who insists that, yes, she REALLY WAS drinking that drink in the red Solo cup even though she thinks she wasn’t. (She wasn’t.)
This leads us to the earliest throes of Sam’s downfall, where FN proceeds to violate her against her better judgment, blatantly disregarding her repeated protests in the back seat of his car. (At this moment, I begin to wish that FN was, indeed, literally faceless and didn’t have a propensity for frequently committing heinous atrocities, so that his literal facelessness could be my only problem with him because he’s already made it on my blacklist twice within a ten-minute span, and I’d love nothing more than to climb into my laptop screen and donkey kick him in the gonads, but that’s beside the point – I mean, if they’re intentionally never showing his face, I’m gonna go ahead and assume that we’re not supposed to find anything remotely human or redeeming within him whatsoever, anyway. Also, more importantly: why do both the tagline and Netflix synopsis for the movie call this a one-night stand when it’s clearly date rape?)
Immediately following this, we’re slapped with a title screen and informed – by the ill-omened “DAY ONE” that pops up after the title – that we will journey with Sam and her upsetting venereal disease on a day-to-day basis. OH GOODY, GOODY GUMDROPS.
Thus, from hereon out, we shall examine Sam’s descent into severe rudeness through mimicking the same daily scale, beginning with day one.
DAY ONE: HEALTHY FLOWERS, CHILLS, AND ONE CRAMP FROM HELL
With most illnesses, when you first start to feel crappy, you don’t feel like the world is ending – you simply feel just a bit… Off. The first day of Sam’s affliction is pretty par for the course in that sense. We learn that the orchids we saw at the beginning were not merely symbols, but are Sam’s pet project: she grows and preens flowers, and she’s extremely excited about one orchid in particular that she hopes will help her accomplish something pretty grand, if the fact that she keeps talking about some committee reviewing her application is any indication.
Sam is – at the moment, anyway – relatable. We feel bad for her because she was dealt some horrendous cards last night, which sucks. Incredibly bad. What’s more, she’s clearly in denial about her relationship status, and, to top it all off, she is now forced to live with her mom after moving out of her girlfriend’s apartment.
Aside from a minor argument with her mother about eating dinner at the table (which was not too extreme in terms of aggression), everything’s pretty chill here (both literally and figuratively, because Sam is cold all the time now). You know, except for the fact that said argument comes to an end when Sam doubles over in pain and claims to have cramps before scampering off to her bedroom. This is the calm before the storm, if you will.
DAY TWO: HEAPS OF BLOOD, DARK VEINS, HEARING LOSS, STUFF SMELLS/TASTES WACK, EYES GET WONKY – ALSO, A MAGGOT
Day two begins with Samantha waking up in a small pool of her own blood; she’s fairly calm about this, WHICH IS RIDICULOUS. I mean, HONESTLY! As a member of 50% of the population who has experienced this exact situation, I know for a fact that more curse words and infuriated slurs are involved… Geez… Anyway, Sam decides to take a shower and notices some wonky areas around her hips where her veins appear black beneath her skin, and she mostly shrugs it off, grabs a tampon, and takes a shower. After that, she complains about a funky smell in her mom’s house before scampering off to her car to go to work.
While Sam’s driving, her friend, Alice (the host of the party the other night and the one forcing her to drink), calls her up to tell her that the police are searching for a weird dude that was at the party. If Sam’s quick, snappy flashbacks are any indication, the cops are looking for FN… Good. I hope they find you, FN.
When Sam’s finally at work, she eats a salad. And spits it out. Because, apparently, it tastes weird. Then, she dodges an awkward conversation with that guy, Riley, who was hitting on her at the party and has a very obvious thing for her and apparently comes to the restaurant often enough to stare at her during his lunch break on the daily have a usual order. Sam makes it very clear that she ain’t got time fo’ dat by trading sections with another waitress.
Her new section greets her with two business-y looking ladies, but Sam fails at taking their drink orders because of the cacophonous, screeching echo sound that’s taken up residence in her eardrums within the last 5 seconds. And it seems to be trolling her, because the sound only happens when the women start to say their orders, kind of like those loud car noises on old sitcoms when you weren’t supposed to hear a character’s name or something. That sucks, Sam. But I feel for you. Your loud noises deafened me, too (*sigh* Earbuds…).
Clearly frightened, she runs to the bathroom, where the noise begins anew, and she has a minor freakout before calming down enough to think, “Hey, I’m here already, might as well pee.” Which begins as a normal bout of peeing, until Sam notices something is off and stands up to find the entire toilet filled with blood, almost as though a Scrubbing Bubbles toilet cleaner cling became possessed by a demonic entity and ejected copious amounts of blood into the toilet bowl rather than soap. (This is the only way it can be described. LOOK AT ALL THE BLOOD, THOUGH. SICK.)
The poor thing then makes a small attempt to clean it up with a solitary sheet of one-ply toilet paper, which is very sweet of her, because, as anyone who has EVER had to clean public toilets as part of a job requirement knows, most people take tremendous pride in destroying all toilets and then marching away, a steely gaze in their eyes, as you pass them and cry out in horror when you reach the ghastly masterpiece they’ve left tucked away for you behind the stall door. Clearly, the disease has not quite damaged Sam’s niceness factor yet. Bless you, Sam.
She runs into her coworker outside the bathroom door, and an interaction similar to this goes down:
Coworker: “Is everything ok?”
Samantha: “YEAH. JUST REALLY BAD CRAMPS.”
Coworker: “… U need a tampon, bruh?”
Samantha: “NAH I’MMA BLATANTLY IGNORE THE SUDDEN ONSET OF THESE SOMEWHAT ALARMING HEALTH ISSUES AND GO BACK TO WORK.”
Needless to say, this is a bad idea. Because, this time, when she attempts to take orders from the same two women, she crumples like a leaf onto the floor, crying in pain. So, Sam decides to not ignore it anymore. +10 INTELLIGENCE POINTS.
We find ourselves in a doctor’s office, loaded with containers o’ condoms and “GET YOURSELF TESTED” posters. When the doc comes in, he performs a half-assed standard wellness exam: he listens to her heart, checks her ears with an otoscope, asks her to open and say “Ahh” without depressing her tongue or even shining a light into her mouth, and then proclaims that she has an unusually slow heartrate, that her ears are getting infected, and that she’s probably just got a headcold. Right. “But,” he so eloquently states, “that doesn’t explain the vaginal bleeding.” (In case you were wondering, this is a highly astute observation because I, too, cannot recall a time where a headcold has ever transmogrified my ladybits into the elevator from The Shining.)
He asks if they should take a look, but Sam changes the subject to say that she also has a rash, which is what she’s calling the blackened veins from earlier, I guess. He looks at it, and then has a very out-of-place and accusatory conversation with her about whether or not she’s sexually active (which would suggest that he might KNOW what’s going on, mayhap), but after she admits she had sex with a guy and doesn’t remember if any protection was involved, he chills out, says she’s definitely got a rash and a headcold, tells her to get moisturizing cream for the “rash,” and sends her on her way without doing a pelvic exam. Ok, then… Aside from the fact that this doctor is literally the worst, SAM, YOU LEFT OUT THE PARTS ABOUT THE INTENSE CRAMPS, STUFF SMELLING/TASTING FUNNY, AND THE TINY, SCREECHING PTERODACTYLS RIVERDANCING ON YOUR EARDRUMS. Ugh.
Either way, judging from the unparalleled talent oozing from this doctor so far, my guess is that if he DID do a pelvic exam, it probably would have gone a little like this:
Samantha: “So, doc, what’s the damage?”
Doc: “Welp, my results are inconclusive, but… It seems as though you’ve tested positive for having a vagina.”
Samantha: “WAT SAY IT AIN’T SO.”
Doc: “I mean, I’m gonna have to run some more tests to be sure, but yeah. Those are some hella vagina-esque symptoms you’ve got there.”
Samantha: “WAT DO I DO.”
Doc: “I’m afraid we can’t do nuthin’. #vaginalyfe”
After her little doctor visit, Sam goes to visit her ex. Non-ex? Maybe ex? Who knows. I’m just going to call her doucheasaurus rex because that’s what she is. They have some awkward convos, Sam hints at moving back in, doucheasaurus rex acts weird about it, doucheasaurus rex then gets jealous for no reason but continues to be a doucheasaurus, and then we find out that doucheasaurus kept important mail away from Sam concerning her flowers. Sam got into her chosen flower expo thing! What awful timing, Sam. That sucks.
Sam leaves, goes to dinner with Alice, and this happens:
Alice: “WTF IS UP WITH YOUR EYE.”
Sam: “WAT.”
Alice: “WTF IS UP WITH YOUR EYE.”
Sam: *goes to bathroom and looks into mirror* “WAT.”
Alice: *follows into bathroom* “WTF IS UP WITH YOUR EYE.”
Sam: *notices eye is extremely red and disgusting like it’s bleeding* “WAT.”
Alice: “IT LOOKS GROSS. WAT DRUGS ARE YOU ON.”
Sam: “NONE I JUST LEFT DOUCHEASAURUS REX’S, THO.”
Alice: “… You fixed your relationship?”
Sam: “Biznatch, I might have.”
Alice: *does nothing to mask disappointed tone* “Great.”
Sam: “K. Hey, did you hear anything else about that dude from your party, AKA FN?”
Alice: “*peeing* Yeah, bro, he was on the news. It’s hella bad, I think.”
Sam: “Sweet.”
Following this semi-accurate recreated exchange, Sam goes home and tries the home remedy recommended to her by the worst doctor ever (that is, putting some rash cream on her necrotic bits). But, something’s off. There’s disgusting, squishy noises, and Sam lets us know that stuff smells pretty rank. Then, she gets up off of the toilet, and a maggot collides with the bathroom tile, unbeknownst by Sam. (Now, mind you, I’m not an insect expert. But, like, how could a fly give birth to its children down there if she’s been wearing pants, practicing good hygeine, and basically NOT sitting outside for hours on end, naked from the waist down? But whatever. Eww is what they were going for, and eww is the vote they get from me.)
She looks in the mirror, notices her eye has gotten worse, and brushes her teeth, during which we hear something kinda gross, and then she shoves her hand in her mouth and yoinks out a molar. Then there’s a lot of puking, nightsweats, and otherwise. What day is this of her illness? TWO? Yikes.
By the way, this is what the flowers look like now, in case you were excited about revisiting dat vaginal symbolism.
DAY THREE (OF THREE – AW CRAP): NO BRIEF DESCRIPTION WILL DO THIS DAY JUSTICE
Sam wakes up next to the toilet lookin’ like a million bucks.
HA. Just kidding. She looks awful, obviously. And she’s basically sitting in a huge pool of blood. Once again, she tries to clean up her mess with a single sheet of one-ply toilet paper. Sam is, for all intents and purposes, one of those ridiculous people in an infomercial with no common sense, I guess.
Hot also feels really cold to her. She turns the shower knob to about 120000 degrees Fahrenheit and accuses her mom of using all the hot water, claiming that it’s not hot at all, even though we can all see some bodacious steam rising in the bathroom. To demonstrate to her mother just how cold the water really is, Sam shoves her arm under the water and burns the bejeebus out of it. Sam, Sam, Sam…
Of course, even though Sam looks like she just slithered out of a Clive Barker novel, her mom takes a good, hard look at her and accuses her of being on drugs again.
Sam blows this off to get in the shower, "cold" water be damned. Her hair starts falling out. In huge clumps. Which, she also doesn’t notice.
In fact, her mom is the one to point it out to her when she sees the massive bald spot on the back of Sam’s head as Sam is leaving the house. They argue a lot. Sam’s mom blames it on drugs some more and gets really upset.
Sam throws on a beanie and some shades and blows that popsicle stand.
As she’s on her way to the doctor, her boss calls:
Boss: “Where are you?”
Sam: “I need to go to the doc.”
Boss: “Are you dying? ‘Cause I need to you to work, obvs.”
Sam: “K, LOL, BE TO WORK SHORTLY!”
Let us consider this as the ultimate, true beginning of Sam’s rude factor...
There comes a time, in every person’s life, where you realize that being reliable needs to be put aside in order to save your health (and everyone else’s). For instance, while you may hate being at home sick with a stomach bug, you’ll probably realize that you will feel like death and quickly bestow exploding guts upon everyone at your workplace if you actually decide to show up.
Sam does not comprehend this logic.
In the world of Sam on day three of the worst STD ever, it makes perfect sense to NOT tell your boss that you’re extremely sick and to, instead, show up at work where you slough off your fingernails into someone’s salad. (Which is fab because the husband of the lady with the fingernail in her salad just calmly shakes his head as if to say, “Damn it, honey. I TOLD YOU we should have gone to TGI Friday’s.”)
Sam tells off stalker-ish Riley on her way out of work. He replies by telling her that he saw her with FN at the party. She’s not sure what he wants, but she tells him to leave her the eff alone and storms off to go back to the worst doctor ever.
Alice calls her while she’s in the waiting room and informs her of the fact that the police are trying to find anyone who came into contact with FN at the party. Ruh-roh, Raggy.
We revisit the world’s worst doc in his natural habitat...
Doc: *looks at Sam’s death eyes* “YOU’RE SURE THIS HAPPENED AFTER HAVING SEX – UNPROTECTED – SEX?”
Sam: “Yup.”
Doc: “Pretty sure this is an STD then.”
Sam: “Can I have some pills or cream or somethin’?”
Doc: “NOPE DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS DON’T COME INTO CONTACT WITH ANYBODY ‘TIL WE FIGURE IT OUT WOW THIS IS REAL BAD.”
Sam: “… Balls… Welp, I’m off to go make some contact with more people!”
Doc: “But-“
Sam: “Bye now!”
To accurately capture the sheer weirdness of the third act of this movie – and to further dissect Sam’s erratic illness-fueled rudeness – here’s a list of what happens in the 25 minute span of the movie after Sam leaves the doctor’s office (everything that follows is exactly what happens. No scenes are eliminated to make the progression of this more humorous):
1. She scores some heroin from Zane, the dude who offered her drugs at the beginning of the movie. He reveals himself as the token, stoned dude and makes really ill-placed jokes.
2. Alice randomly shows up at the Zane’s place and asks what’s up – Sam tells her what happened with FN, she tells Sam to go to the police, and Sam’s like, “NAH, GONNA CONTINUE SNORTING THIS HEROIN. THANKS, THOUGH.”
3. Alice shows genuine concern for Sam’s plight, especially when Sam removes her sunglasses and reveals her horrendous eyeball sitch.
4. Sam accuses Alice of only caring about her because she’s got a thing for her. Wow, Sam. Rude.
5. Sam pretty much says, “If you cared about me, you’d help me hide my glaring health issues instead of getting me real help. Getting me real help will result in me only being left with you.” Wow, Sam. Stupid and rude.
6. Zane tells Alice that he sold roofies to FN at the party. THIS MOVIE IS A MESS.
7. Sam goes to her place of employment to drink liquor. She asks if her boss is there, and her coworker says, in so many words, “Nah, but you should probably leave soon because he’s still pretty upset about the whole fingernail in the salad business.”
8. Sam sees who she thinks could be FN and follows him outside, but he disappears.
9. Sam goes home to steal her wilted flowers, just in time to find her mother staging an intervention. Sam angrily asserts that she doesn’t need any help and that she’s fine. They argue for a bit, and then she points out all of the flaws in her mother’s life – which, kinda rude, but to be fair, her mom has been quite homophobic, and she and Sam have been on-edge around one another the entire movie. (Also, Sam’s teeth now look like George Washington’s, which is hilarious because they were fine 5 minutes ago.)
10. Her mom says, “What’s wrong?” To which Sam replies by ripping off her sweet shades to scream “HERE!” and display her all-of-a-sudden completely whitened left eyeball.
11. Sam goes to her flower competition to display her wilted flowers. The guy in charge gets skeeved out at her eyes and her wilted flowers and tries to kick her out. She smashes the flowers down on the table in front of them and storms out. Again, Sam… You got yourself into this. Your flowers are wilted. So rude.
12. Sam goes to visit doucheasaurus rex. Apparently, Alice called doucheasaurus rex and told her everything. So, you can guess how well their interaction goes because it ends in Sam murdering her whilst telling her she loves her. Welp, that’s one way of handling rejection. Ruuude.
13. Sam immediately speeds off to Alice’s house and accuses her of making her murder doucheasaurus. Nope, Sam. That was your decision. Ruuuuuuude.
14. Alice pulls a knife on Sam. Sam retaliates by making out with her, which is mostly consensual on Alice’s end, even though Sam looks like something you’d find in a litter box. Wait, what?
15. Sam throws up blood into Alice’s mouth. WAIT, WHAT?
16. NOW Sam asks for help… After spreading pestilence to Alice… RUDE.
17. Sam rips out Alice’s throat with her teeth. R-U-D-E.
18. “I’m so sorry, Alice.” NO YOU AREN’T.
19. “I can’t let you do this!” What’s she gonna do, Sam? YOU JUST RIPPED HER THROAT OUT WITH YOUR TEETH, YOU RUDE MOFO.
20. Sam smashes Alice’s head in with a pestle…
21. Sam steals one of Alice’s dresses, as well as her cell phone……
22. She calls Riley – yep, the dude she told off earlier – because she “needs someone to talk to.” Which must be Sam’s code for “I’M GONNA SPREAD THIS DISEASE AROUND SOME MORE” because she starts putting on makeup. Nah, Sam. I really don’t think any amount of concealer will cover up your gangrenous lower lip. Good luck with this booty call.
23. She unceremoniously drags Alice’s body off and lights some mood candles. Ugh. Please, no.
24. Riley shows up. He asks where Alice is, and she simply says, “Oh, she’s in the back.” Not a lie, BUT STILL. TERRIBLE.
25. She starts seducing him. Apparently, nothing seems off to him – or anyone, really – about the fact that NO HUMAN BEING LOOKS LIKE THAT EVER UNLESS SOMETHING IS HORRIFICALLY WRONG BEYOND BASIC EXPLANATION.
26. They start getting jiggy with it. While Sam knows that Alice is dead, Riley doesn’t, and apparently gives no darns about the fact that they’re doing this in Alice’s house while she’s home.
27. Riley: “IT KINDA TINGLES. IT’S TINGLING.” <-- Actual quote.
28. Another maggot falls out, unbeknownst to both of them.
29. Riley: *calmly* “Wait. There’s something moving in there.” <-- Another actual quote.
30. MEALWORMS EVERYWHERE. (Ok, so, remember that time I said I wasn’t an insect expert? Well, I’m still not. But I’m also quite confident in the fact that mealworms don’t just take up residence inside people without them knowing. Ugh.)
31. Riley runs to the bathroom to vomit and tries to clean the blood off of his torso. He finds Alice in the shower.
32. Alice’s corpse: “HI, RILEY!”
Riley: “WHY DID I JUST GET DRAGGED INTO ALL OF THIS?” <-- Not actual quotes, but might as well be.
... That was a lot to go down in a very short span of time… Wowza.
But, have no fear! It’s not over yet.
The movie comes to a close as Sam speeds from Alice’s house and calls her mom to get help. Her mom tells her to stop driving. But then the screeching noise in her ears comes back, and she calmly lays her head on her car horn and dozes off as she goes careening into traffic.
After an unknown amount of time, she climbs out of the car and starts charging at the police, who have arrived on the scene and apparently done nothing to try to extract her from the car.
Her mom is there, too.
Her mom calls her over, and Sam "Michael Jackson’s Thriller" dances over to her mom and attacks her.
Because, you know, she’s a zombie now.
~ *FIN* ~
FINAL VERDICTS: Above all else, I’m sticking to my guns about the ridiculousness of the character behavior in this film. While the concept of zombie apocalypse ground zero as an STD is an intriguing one, it’s hard to overlook the insanity displayed here, particularly in the last half hour. Of course, I utilize “rude” facetiously throughout this examination, but is there really a better word? (Maybe “irrational”? But I like “rude” better.)
That being said, the movie might make more sense if it was meant to be appreciated as a partial, dark comedy; however, those dark comedic tones are upper-cutted by the film’s darker tone throughout, as well as its shady concept of genital-centered body horror as a whole (without anything goofy, like vagina dentata – I’m looking in your direction, Teeth)...
What can be said in terms of analysis here, though, is that – through the outrageousness of the characters’ actions (particularly Sam’s and the doctor’s) – we see genuine ignorance displayed in terms of understanding and handling sexually transmitted infections appropriately, especially considering the idea that Sam’s affliction is driven by her fear at reporting her violent sexual encounter with the guy at the party. Moreover, Sam’s sexuality is constantly in the foreground – she and other characters are always coming into conflict over her preference for women – and this cannot be ignored, either. Is all of this a dig at the lack of well-rounded sexual education in America, particularly when it comes to handling sexual education on all ends of the spectrum?
Mayhap it is, mayhap it isn’t.
If it is, and if we consider Americans’ present fascination with the zombie apocalypse, it’s highly ironic that the virus that causes supreme zombification could be directly related to ignorance surrounding unreported rape and subsequent sexually transmitted diseases. On the other hand, though, the tagline and the sheer outrageousness of the final act in this movie seems to suggest that assuming the former might be giving Contracted more credit than it deserves.
Nice vaginal symbolism, though.
*cleans melted chocolate off of laptop with a single sheet of one-ply toilet paper*