I was a big fan of the 2013 "Contracted" movie by director Eric England, and thus I was really anxious to see the continuation of the movie as the first movie left us with on a cliffhanger.
Right, well I must admit that my expectations were shot down quite fast here at the hands of director Josh Forbes. Whomever wrote the script for the sequel clearly weren't as intense in their creative writing as those working on the first movie.
This 2015 sequel was at best a mediocre movie that fumbled and stumbled all around as it tried to pick up the cliffhanger of the 2013 movie and then turned it into something that was nowhere as interesting or intense as the first movie. No, they took a very good idea and mashed it into something that was laughable and generic at best.
While the movie does continue on from where the first movie left, then the storyline in "Contracted: Phase II" just was a scrambled mess of trying to show more infections in people and trying to piece in some background of how this infection came into being at all.
The background story was just ludicrous, and it was actually infuriating that they opted for such a ridiculous approach to it all. Especially because it just unraveled everything that the first movie had built up so well.
It should be said that the effects in "Contracted: Phase II" are adequate, and they are actually the thing that keeps the movie afloat and saves it from sliding down into a level of being less than mediocre. But effects can only do so much, especially when the storyline is taking a nosedive.
The acting in "Contracted: Phase II" wasn't the most memorable of performances, and it certainly wasn't fully up to level with what was seen in the first movie. Perhaps it was because of the ludicrous storyline and script, because I do believe that the actors and actresses were doing fair enough jobs.
"Contracted: Phase II" is a very dissatisfying sequel, and somehow I wish that I hadn't seen it, because it really was a laughable movie, and it tainted everything built up by the first movie.
I will actually go as far as to say that watching "Contracted: Phase II" is definitely not a must, because letting the 2013 movie hang on a cliffhanger is a much more worthy ending to it. I was sorely disappointed with this movie, but stuck with it to the end to see it finished. And anything even remotely zombie is of interest to me.
"Contracted: Phase II" manages to land a very mediocre five out of ten stars rating from me.
