His
unfortunate name is BJ and he makes Typhoid Mary look socially responsible. He
infected Samantha with the zombie pathogen in the first film, most definitely
against her will. Subsequently, she passed it on to the horny torch-carrying
Riley, before he realized how grotesque she had become. She will not make it
past the prologue of the sequel, but he spends most of the second film
experiencing what she went through in the first. However, he will be a little
more concerned with the macro picture in Josh Forbes’ Contracted: Phase 2 (trailer here), which screens midnight-ish
this weekend at the IFC Center.
Picking
up immediately where the first film left off, Phase 2 reveals it really is curtains for Samantha and her mom.
Riley is pretty much done for too, but he does not realize it yet. However, his
rashes and strange growth thingys do not look good. The periodic projectile
vomiting of blood is also a bad sign. He is definitely changing, undergoing
what will be an ugly and painful process. However, old BJ will get a kick out
of it while watching from somewhat afar.
Det.
Crystal Young wants to get to BJ through Samantha’s social circle, but Riley is
in denial and therefore unwilling to come clean. Of all possible times, his
feisty grandmother finally decides to fix him up with Harper, her impossibly tolerant
visiting care nurse. For their first date, Riley takes her to Samantha’s
memorial service, because he knows how to show a lady a good time. At least
there is a little bit of humor when one of their hipster friends performs a
perfectly dreadful tribute song (that is supposed to be embarrassingly awful).
Even
by sequel standards, Phase 2 seems
like a pedestrian repackaging of genre movie elements. The big deal about the
first film was the way it applied Cabin
Feverish body horror to the zombie, so Forbes wisely never stints on the
slimy, pus-oozing transformation scenes. Narrative logic might not be a
priority but he certainly knows what he needs to do.
If
you have been pining for a sequel to the first Contracted, your enthusiasm might be tempered by writer-director Eric
England noninvolvement in any capacity on Phase
2. It also might be a bummer screenwriter Simon Barrett (You’re Next, The Guest) does not return
as BJ, but the evil Patient Zero really does not have a lot of interesting
stuff to do this time around. On the other hand, Matt Mercer shivers and
wretches as well as anyone could ask as the ill-fated Riley. Anna Lore’s Harper
is also nicely down-to-earth and engaging.
