Alright, it’s time to kick off a mini-theme for Horrortoberfest where I watch sequels to movies I have previously reviewed for Horrortoberfest. First up is the sequel to Contracted, the movie about STZs (sexually transmitted zombies). The first one really was riding on the strength of the premise. As I noted in the review, it was great as a metaphor but not so much so as a believable plot. The sequel mostly ditches the entire metaphor and goes for a much more straightforward zombie infection movie. It loses quite a bit of originality but at least added in some for real reasons why someone wouldn’t just immediately go to the hospital.

The movie opens immediately where the first one left off but now we are centered on Riley. He had sex with Samantha, the STZ lady, from the first film and now he is infected. We start off on Day 4 of the infection, which already telegraphs that this movie isn’t going to be about the transformation like the first one but rather the repercussions of the first movie. We see that Riley lives with his Grandmother, has a job in social service, and is generally a nice guy. All the better that he will now infect and destroy everything in his life. The virus no longer spreads through sexual contact but any contact can be good enough to spread it. Also the corpse fucker from the first film is now the main antagonist with the creation of an STZ apparently his goal and he’s all ranty about humanity and punishment like a shitty version of John Doe from Se7en.

The film ends up having a lot more action and zombies and craziness to it than the first one. We even get a subplot of the detective that is trying to solve the deaths from the first movie and how she stumbles onto corpse fucker’s den of crazy. Instead of the isolation and complete breakdown that the infection was in the first movie, we instead have a more violent reaction to it. Riley attempts to find and kill CF before he fully succumbs to the infection. While this certainly makes the movie more exciting than the first one, I don’t know that it really has as much depth to it. I will say I was happy to see that he is told multiple times to go to the hospital and the reason he doesn’t is because he wants to get revenge first and knows that he is going to die. Which just makes him selfish and irresponsible instead of an idiot, like Samantha.

By the time it gets to the end of the movie, you basically are seeing a full blown zombie outbreak happening. Instead of it taking a week for the infection to turn people, it’s taking a day. His grandmother turns after 2 days just because they both drank from the same glass. Which makes this actually a much more easily communicable version than even standard zombie movies. Normally you need a bite or scratch or something to get turned but this is basically saying that if you even come into contact with one of these zombies, you will be turned. Like you would need full hazmat to fight these guys. While this might be a logical outgrowth of the first film as far as escalation goes, I think the charm of the first film was its focus on the personal body horror of what was happening.

I’d give this movie the same rating that I gave its predecessor, a 3 out of 5. While not as clever as the original, it does have several very effective scenes for being uncomfortable body horror without resorting to crazy levels of gore.

Favorite thing in the movie: When Riley’s friend that is infected goes to try to take her contacts out. Great example of what I was just talking about.

Least favorite thing: Blatantly trying to set up a third movie at the end. Nobody cares about your shitty bad guy.