There have been a few attempts at “quieter” films about zombies. It can’t all be worldwide epidemics and post-apocalyptic wastelands. And Contracted fills the bill it pretty well.

The results have been entirely successful; indies like Portrait of a Zombie and Revenant barely got made and distributed, and they’ve got problems of their own, while many others descended — only sometimes intentionally — into parody or that weird sub-sub-sub-genre of horror-humor. Only one ‘quiet’ movie of the undead of recent years comes to mind: Deadgirl, which is really so creepy, at so many levels, that you might not want to watch it twice.

And then there’s Contracted, the new feature written and directed by Eric England. It’s the story of Samantha, a twenties-ish woman with a waitress job she doesn’t like and a lesbian girlfriend who’s trying to dump her, who’s recently moved back in with her mother (played wonderfully, horribly by Caroline Williams, a scream queen for generations now)…and who makes one very bad mistake at a party and…well…apparently has sex with a zombie. Or maybe Patient Zero.

It’s no spoiler (considering the poster, above) to say that for most of the movie we watch Samantha–played with a gradually expanding desperation by Najarra Townsend–slowly evolve/devolve into a member of the walking dead, and the journey is quite literally excruciating, as we see this lovely young woman lose teeth, turn gray and red-eyed and drip blood from every orifice. And by the time it gets really out of control, it gets really out of control (maggot sex, anyone?), ending — not surprisingly — very badly for all concerned.

England has played it this way before, in Madison County: about real people in awful, even horrific situations, and this time it work reasonably well, breathing new life (so to speak) into a subgenre that’s on the verge of becoming ho-hum. And though the movie may move too slowly for some — definitely slow-zombie-speed, — there’s an odd kind of despair and humanity in Contracted that has more to do with the Modern Age than it does with the Apocalypse. Though why it takes everyone — mother, friends, doctors, everyone — so long to figure out What’s Wrong With Samantha is kind of baffling. Has no one seen Night of the Living Dead? ‘Cause dude, she’s classic.

It’s available on Netflix and at here, at Amazon Instant Video. And though it’s no Shawn of the Dead, it is a new take and worth a couple of hours.

…or not. Let us know in the comments below…