Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts

Monday, September 22, 2014

Contracted (2013)

Contracted (2013)
Directed by Eric England
Written by Eric England


Image from http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTQwMjQyOTUwN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDQ3MzE2MDE@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg


STDs (or STIs as they're called nowadays) are pretty scary. Some things you can live with, some will kill you, and apparently some will do much worse. That's kind of the premise for Contracted.

From reviews and people I've spoken with, Contracted is either a movie you like or don't. Not really any gray area. I'm part of the do-not-like party. It's one of those movies that you can't even get attached to the protagonist because they do everything wrong. I want to see a horror movie where the character is taking steps towards self preservation, and she has to use intelligence to get out of a situation. I don't want to see a stupid girl get in trouble because of something she chose to do herself.


Samantha and Nikki are taking some time apart. Nikki is so over this, but Sam hopes it's just a short break. In the mean time Sam ends up at her friend Alice's house for a party. After a few drinks she can't even properly decipher which cup is hers and is handed one by an uninvited guest. Before she knows it, she's have straight unprotected sex in his car. In the morning she wakes up in her bed with a fuzzy memory and what she thinks is a bad hangover. At least in her room she's surrounded by beautiful flowers she's growing for a competition. Beyond her door is a mother who isn't so much concerned as she is leery that her daughter is using again.
At work Sam has trouble concentrating. She can't understand customers' orders, and is overwhelmed by a ringing white noise. Seeking solace in the ladies' room, things seems to calm down in her head, but she has a huge amount of blood escape from her lady bits.
Her doctor barely examines her and thinks she may have an STD. Sam is devastated. In her mind she cheated on her girlfriend with a MAN. If only she didn't take a drink from a stranger. If only she didn't have unprotected sex in someone else's car. If only she' insist that her doctor examine her thoroughly instead of looking only at her hips and waist with her panties still on and calling it a day.
Also during that day Sam insists that Nikki and her meet up. While eating out a dude approaches Sam to hit on her. Nikki tells him he doesn't have the right equipment, and he's confused, seeing as Sam did have sex with a guy just a while before. Luckily Nikki shoos him away before she finds out about it.
Later on things get worse. Sam's hair is falling out, Sam's teeth are falling out, Sam's eye is messed up, and maggots are falling from her vagina. And her flowers are dying. So what does she do? Fight with her mom and go to work.
Her boss has insisted she work for a bit before heading to the doctor (not emergency room), but she's cut off when a customer finds bits of her in the food she's prepared.
Once again at the doctor, he doesn't seem too concerned. Tells her he's running tests and she should keep herself isolated for the time being. During all this, Alice has been contacted by the police about one of the guests at her party. He's a wanted man. Has Sam seen this guy? Oh she's more than seem him. He's the one who gave this present to her. But Sam is reluctant still to divulge, because what if Nikki finds out? Alice calls Nikki anyway to tell her and hopefully convince Sam to go to the police. Unfortunately that's not what goes down.
Sam turns from lover to stalker as she shows up at Nikki's, pounding on her door. Can't you tell she's over you? And she's extra pissed that you slept with a man. Sam can't take the criticism and rejection though. If she can't have Nikki no one will. She forces open Nikki's door, throwing Nikki to the ground. While she's dazed, Sam takes the opportunity to kill her. She then decides to stop in at Alice's since she's the one that told Nikki.
When Sam arrives, Alice soon can tell something is wrong. She tries fighting Sam off, but once again Sam kills a friend. And of course the next logical step after killing is to call up that one customer from your work that's been hitting on you, and inviting him over.
So he shows up, and in spite of the fact that clumps of her hair are missing, she's got the teeth of a Mountain Dew addict, one eye is blank, and her lip is scabbed over, this guy decided that he's down to bone. Ooo and she feels so good, right? Wrong. After a few pumps he realizes Sam is crazy bleeding all over his junk, and when he pulls out maggots fall to the floor. Gross! Guy freaks out (as he should have from the start) and rushes to the bathroom to clean off. Unfortunately he finds Alice's body in the bath tub. What to do?!
Sam leaves Alice's and gives her mom a ring. Her mom all of a sudden is concerned about her and her whereabouts. Sam, however, passes out at the wheel. When she comes to, the man has arrived, as well as her mom, and has her car surrounded. She gimply swats at the armed officers, while her mom calls to her. Sam rushes her mother, and finally we see that Zombieism is an STD. And guy from the party (BJ) is spreading it.

Image from http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/i461/gokbiloz/ARNT4/7_zps6a943829.jpg~original

Above is a picture of Sam, halfway through her demise. Don't you want to get with that, just like random guy at the end of the movie? NO! Not to say she's ugly, but simply because any good samaritan would think this looks like a person in distress. She needs medical help. But no. Instead Nikki is too caught up in their breakup and Sam's 'confused' sexuality, Alice is too upset that Sam didn't turn herself into the police, guy from restaurant is too horny, mom thinks she's just a crack head, and Samantha is just dumb. Like I said earlier, can't even feel bad for them. Stupid people suffer avoidable consequences.
Additionally, if your employee came to work looking like that, wouldn't you want her to leave immediately and seek medical aid? Gosh people.

Image from http://i.imgur.com/l0Lxien.png

This movie spans 3 days too, which makes it worse. This pic above is Samantha before things go way south. So within a matter of days she goes from looking like that to this:

Image from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2EusPCzQlJmes5m_qQdUsFcYHxgzqBJyj7yEkIK-0-Oz8UpJ47dQschbET7LGMNmA-P2hWBwiq1SOICXlmOMEFNZPfBdfp2-wC22uuZOrk4Yuli0uURXDc2r9JLlwnFtPwlj2buc8snGO/s1600/contracted-01.jpg

No one, not even herself, was particularly concerned about this immediate transformation. Whatevs.
The one good thing I have to say about it is it's an interesting opinion of how people become zombies.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Decay

 Science nerds, this text should ring a bell. Image from http://www.decayfilm.com/2012/lhc-sign.html

Decay (2012)
Directed by Luke Thompson

Wow.
The film is acceptable, but the curcumstances surrounding it make it great.

 Image from http://www.decayfilm.com/2012/keep-calm-and-baryon.html

So what happens when living tissue is exposed to the 'God Particle'? This film gives one possible answer.
A problem underground in the LHC is detected. Four students, Amy, Connor, James, and Matt, are sent underground to the Large Hadron Collider's control room to monitor things while a tech team investigates the LHC.
While in the control room something goes horribly wrong and the group has to restart the power by leaving the room, all the while Amy is trying to run simulations on her computer of what will happen to live organisms around the Higgs Boson. Once in the tunnels they begin to hear strange sounds. Something attacks the group. James is bitten. They run for their lives.
The group finds refuge in the server room where they hope to get a message to the outside. They cannot contact the outside, however they do receive the simulation results from Amy's computer in the other room. Radiation from the Higgs Boson is deadly. It kills the brain except for the stem, leaving the affected organism only with primal functions. Kill, and eat. Unfortunately someone with security access on the outside is wiping all the data, erasing his tracks. This couldn't have happened by accident. Someone was willing to send innocent people down just to see what the Higgs Boson woul do. The only good news--Connor found a map.
James becomes exhuasted and 'falls asleep'. When he awakens he's just like the other creatures and attacks Connor. Matt flees, leaving Amy to kill her own brother to save her crush, Connor.
After James is killed, Amy helps a wounded Connor hobble away. In another tunnel they're hunted again and Connor is eaten. Grief-stricken and alone Amy continues. Meanwhile Matt gets attacked by a  bunch of ladies and eaten.
Amy eventually makes it out only to find someone infected got out before her and everyone in sight is infected. Amy seeks shelter inside a professor's office. She knows he has a backup copy of all the data on the 'God Particle', so Amy has to send it out to let the world know.
Behind her a man, the director general of CERN, enters the room aiming a gun at her. He had to let this happen, the research was too important he tells her. Her professor wanted to shut down the LHC, but he couldn't have that. And he can't let her go blabbing. He shoots Amy. Unfortunately for him she's been recording a voicemail to another physicist the whole time, and may or may not have already emailed the data.

Matt following Connor down a tunnel. Image from http://www.decayfilm.com/2012/tunnel-flashlight-2.html

So this is a film you can watch and download for free, as it is made under a Creative Commons license. Pretty cool. It's offered in many different qualities from SD to theatre screening.

Also interesting to mention is the film was made by students and physicists. It's not something made by film students. With that in mind, I'm understanding of the editing decisions. However, as an editor, some of the audio issues and pacing issues could have easily been resolved XP There lots of shot where a character walks past a camera looking down a corridor. If only the shot hung on that empty corridor for a couple extra seconds the tension could have been hugly increased just by giving the audience a chance to think 'Oh noes, something's gonna cast a shadow or start walking down the hall!'

The audio is atrocious. Again if my rocket science peeps showed me a film of this caliber I'd be amazed, but just to be critical from a film person's POV I'm mentioning it. A lot of the audio problems could have been resolved with L cuts in the non-linear editing software. Even running the audio through something like Audacity could have cleaned up a bunch of that white noise which is not consistent from one scene to the next. In some cases the audio was too loud and seemed to peak, in some cases it was too quiet (mostly with dialogue).

There was a lot of nice mood lighting though. I'm not sure if it was just how the tunnels were regularly lit, or if the crew had to do anything special, but that was great. The amount of darkness versus what was visible in each scene was a great balance.

This film was made with an incredibly small budget, making it all the more amazing. These are just some of the circumstances that make this movie great, in spite of technical flaws.

If you enjoy science, if you enjoy b-movies, if you want to see what physicists do for fun, watch this film.