Contracted: Still on the fence between "Liked It" and "Really Liked It" let me know what you thought and help me decide.

I’m not gonna get my hopes up anymore. I probably would have loved Contracted had I not gotten my hopes up. It’s an independent horror movie, and that can mean anything. Toad Road? God I hope not. Absentia? I hope so. It was neither, and though closer to – it still was not a knock-out surprise that my wife and I found Absentia to be.

            I saw the preview of the movie, and still I thought the whole thing was going to be something more than what the preview hinted at. My wife did not see the preview and it wasn’t but a short while into the movie – probably around the time the Day 1 title card appeared – that my wife called what was going on. Again, I held out hope that it would all be something original, but alas my wife was correct once again.

            But then, so was I, to a degree, because it was done in a way that my wife and I agreed was original and an interesting perspective of a tired idea that was done very well for an indie movie.

            A movie is good if my wife will sit through the whole thing while having to look away more than once. If she doesn’t give up after having to look away more than once then she’s interested. I enjoyed the gross parts, crying out in discomfort (the scenes varying from massive menstrual blood – like multiple scenes of massive menstrual blood – to teeth being easily pulled out as well as nails being pulled off) but laughing at the same time.

            With everything that was good about this movie, the interesting take on an old idea, and the acting which was pretty good, the fact that it does still just all come down to something that we see way too much in movies now-a-days was a bit disappointing. The other part that hurt the movie was the fact that it takes quite a big step out of reality to keep the story going.

            The effects of the disease on the girl are intense and gross and her acting is well done so that it all combines a sort of tense dread and sorrow for the girl, but the way the story is written is has her reach a point of grossness that it is nearly impossible for the people around her to ignore or just pass off as her being sick – and yet they do, even the doctor reacts to things in a way that is completely unbelievable, and it is these moments that really hurt the movie.

            It may be unfair, but when a movie is really good, the most minor mistakes seem to be much bigger than they are because the rest of the movie is so good.

            I just did not understand why she had to be at the level of grossness that she was at and still she needed to do things that moved the story forward that made it unbelievable that she would even try to do those things with the state that she was in. Why not have her NOT be so gross, keep the story going, and then at the end reach that level when she essentially becomes the monster? She’s a good looking girl, I can admit that, but there ain’t no girl good looking enough (sorry to my wife) that I’d kiss, much less sleep with, when they got the sort of things going on with their body that this girl has – but in this movie, a guy can get over her teeth (rotting? Hello bad breath!), her skin (nothing a vat of lotion would probably still not help). I mean, at this point it’s clear what’s going on so there’s gotta be some obvious signs, smell, feel, taste, that would turn a guy off. Not the guy in this movie though, this guy powers through all that stuff like a pro and get’s the job done (if there’s a sequel, I’d love to find out if the sex was worth it for that guy).

            This movie is an origin story, and through all the bad parts in this movie, it’s not a bad movie, and though my wife said she’d put she liked it, I was on the line between liked it an really liked it.

            My wife said that this was the most disturbing movie she’d seen since The Human Centipede. Yes, my wife actually sat through that whole movie, and I will forever love her for that and will forever proudly tell my friends, family, and complete strangers how awesome my wife is for doing such a thing. Granted she hated it, but she watched it all, and that says something. Of course she didn’t watch the second one, but my wife and I – we’ll always have the first Human Centipede.

            Now I would not say it’s like the Human Centipede, even the gross factor is not the same, but my wife disagrees, so – whatever. Maybe it is, but I stand by my own feelings that this movie and the Human Centipede are not even close to being similar, this movie is gross and all but not like Centipede gross.

            A total bonus of this movie though is Dave Holmes. The minute he walked into the movie I had this smile on my face, and his one scene is hilarious and I had to pause the movie to fill my wife in on the history of Dave Holmes, and if you don’t know it then don’t read my blog, just get out, seriously. If you do know it, correct me if I’m wrong, but back in the day MTV would have competitions to see who would be the next VJ (trying to make it a big deal since it hadn’t been since the glory days of Tabitha Soren) and Dave Holmes actually lost to some weird guy named Dude, or something like that. Anyway, the weird Dude guy did like a few gigs as a VJ but it was Dave Holmes who ended up becoming like a guest VJ and got all the cherry gigs and went on to star in a few movies. Not sure what happened to Dude.

            Anyway, it was cool seeing him in this movie.

            I digress, though I’m pretty much done anyway. It’s not a bad movie, and with lower expectations it would be a pretty good movie, which, I guess that’s why I’m here, to lower you expectations of movies streaming on Netflix as well as blogs.

            You’re welcome.

I "Loved It" Absentia: Watch it, love it, or get traded in for someone who will (that's an Absentia reference)

This movie is what Netflix is good for.

            Yeah, you want to see the blockbuster movies that everyone tells you to see, that TV and other movies tell you to see. I get that, I’m like that too, I wanna see those movies too; but there are other movies that don’t get that same treatment. The movies that are under the radar and are a bit more difficult to categorize, they’re a bit more difficult to know who to tell to see it so they don’t get recognized as much, and that’s where Netflix comes in.

            Netflix doesn’t have the a very large streaming selection of popular movies, no one’s gonna argue that, so what are you gonna do? Bitch and moan and watch nothing and talk about how you’re gonna drop Netflix because they’re not streaming the summer blockbuster movies that you saw and wanna see again, or didn’t happen to see and wanna see now? Okay, fine, you know what you could do? Give a movie that you haven’t heard of a try. Holy crap, Joshua Hampel, you just blew my fuckin’ mind! Yeah I did you llama, now go check Absentia out.

            The first thing that got me was the music. If you like Brian Eno then you’ll dig it, even kind of reminded me of Reznor doing the Social Nework soundtrack. I’ve told my wife several times, if the music is good – no matter how bad the movie is – I’m more likely to watch the whole thing. Music and how it sets the mood is important to the movie and this one got it right. A horror movie with cool and quiet music, totally not what you’d expect – but then again this isn’t a big budget horror movie, this is one of those guys that doesn’t have a big budget to rely on to keep people watching. No, this movie has got the story and the actors, and that’s it, and boy does it use it all to it’s maximum potential. The acting is pretty dang good, and even when it’s bad it doesn’t take away from the movie but more add to the sense of reality that this movie is based in.

            There isn’t much action, and when there is it’s not a huge dramatic event. This movie is based so hard in reality that no one is gonna be a major ass kicker, they’re gonna react just like us – they watch what is going on – not believing it’s happening and then afterwards unsure of what the hell just happened.

            The fact that the budget for this movie wasn’t as inflated as a Hollywood movie helps – I think – because during scenes like the action, or anytime the monster/insect is in the room, you don’t see much of it at all. The creature is left for you to imagine what it really looks like. The creature has a sound though, and that combined with the music makes me think that the people behind this movie felt that sound plays an important part in movies like this, and I would have to agree. There are other low-budget independent movies with monsters that you don’t see much of, but what you do see are teeth and eyes and skin and you hear growls and chomping, just all the usual stuff. It’s at the point where we don’t need to see the thing to know what it looks like – it looks like every other monster from every other movie we’ve seen.

            Not here. Here the monster sounds different, and I can’t say if it looks different because we see hardly any of it at all, but it certainly sounds different so in my mind it is nothing like any other horror/monster movie I’ve seen, this one is different, original, better.

            The scares in this movie are different too. They’re not loud jump scares with an even louder musical cue to let you know when to jump. None of that here. Here we just have shit showing up out of the blue (broad daylight, during prayers) and no scares where there normally are (closed shower curtains, jogging through a scary tunnel). This movie expertly keeps you guessing as to not only what is going to happen next but what is going on at all. Are these horrible things really happening? Or, thanks to a chillingly calm conversation between two detectives towards the end of the movie, can everything that’s been going on be easily explained? Flashing back through the movie while they talk you see that, holy crap, that could totally be what is going on, stuff is gone over again, conversations are replayed and you’re thinking – how fucked up would that be if that’s what is really going on here?

            My wife and I both watched this movie and we were blown away by how good it was. This movie kind of ruined us though as well because now we are looking for more movies like it. Good movies – scratch that, this is a really good movie – that will surprise us as this one did.

            The guy who made this movie has a new movie coming out called Oculus. I think it’s scheduled to come out on April 11. My wife and I plan on going to the theatre and check it out. Most people root for their sports teams, my wife and I root for our movie directors and writers and actors and this guy, Mike Flanagan, is a guy that we want to make more movies. I will admit that we were not impressed with the trailer for Oculus but we hold out hope that he will not let us down, and as I’m sure he’s concerned about his arts’ reception to a couple in Kansas, he’ll give nothing but his best.

                      Oh yeah:

                       Watch Absentia!