While "Contracted" is an intimate character study, "Contracted: Phase II" aimlessly follows multiple characters. But of the film's ensemble cast, milquetoast beta-male Riley (Matt Mercer) is the film's clear lead. In "Contracted," Riley was a frustrated "nice guy." Which is to say: Riley, a shallow, shy young man who won't take "No" for an answer, chases after Samantha, a sensitive, questioning young woman who warily identifies as a lesbian, until she gives into her disease's symptomatic sex-lust and has relations with Riley. But in "Contracted: Phase II," Riley is just a frustrated victim who becomes an gun-wielding avenger once he sets out to kill B.J. (Morgan Peter Brown), the man responsible for giving Samantha her unidentifiable super-disease.

Riley's unconvincing transformation into a vengeance-seeking alpha-male is disappointing because Riley isn't much of a character to begin with. When we first rejoin him, Riley is getting tested for STDs. He's told point-blank by his sister's husband that men have a lower chance of catching STDs than women do. But because the double standard between how men and women's promiscuity is respectively treated is an interesting angle, the makers of "Phase II" do not choose to pursue it. Instead, they divide their time between mocking the vanity of Riley's pregnant, self-help-book-writing sister Brenda (Laurel Vale), and explaining B.J.'s background through cypher detective Crystal's (Marianna Palka) investigation. While that's going on, Riley's grandma Margie (Suzanne Voss) and Margie's care-giver Harper (Anna Lore) struggle to come to the plot's foreground. They never make it, and are ultimately treated like accessories to Riley's self-actualizing quest, as we are lead to anticipate in an early scene where Margie tells Riley to "[not] be a pussy" and drink the glass of whiskey she offers him.

Tantalizing details like that--when's the last time an older woman was allowed to drink without her taste for alcohol becoming the puchline to a dumb joke--are what makes "Phase II" such a chore. Following a myriad characters in the vain hopes of impressing viewers' with the scope of the original "Contracted" just doesn't cut it when our focus is on B.J.'s generic serial killer, and Riley's testy but equally forgettable would-be hero.

Riley only comes to life whenever he's picking at various little wounds all over his body. These scenes are filmed so effectively that viewers will feel vicariously relieved, particularly when Riley applies rubbing alcohol or surgical forceps to marks that eventually cover his entire body. One can't help but think admiringly of the body horror films of David Cronenberg, particularly "The Fly," during these scenes since they make viewers simultaneously wonder and repulsed at the discovery of new scabs, lesions, and other corporeal imperfections.

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