Great Film overall

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Feisty daughter returns to her dead mother's house and experiences unexplained supernatural phenomena.Quite effective mid-budget chiller, which, at least, is largely explained at the end (although the fate of the two missing persons is rather ambiguous).Most scares are signposted (apart from two effective jump scares), which takes away the impact somewhat, but overall it is quite effective. Similar to 'Stir of Echoes' in plot.My main criticism is that everyone seems to do everything alone. Whereas this is understandable for the loner heroine, a cop is unlikely to go into a house alone and knock a house about to get evidence (you would hope).I suspect the writers were subconsciously influenced by 'Salem's Lot', as some of the characters' names are similar - ie. Glick/Barlow.At one point the heroine gets a probate cheque for thousands of dollars. In the UK this process would take at least 18 months, but here seems to be completed with the stroke of a pen.Overall, I'm being hypercritical, as it is well worth watching and is eminently watchable, if the plot devices are somewhat familiar in films of this type.Worth checking out.

"The Pact" is one of those films I've had a mild interest in but never really gave much thought to for whatever reason. A low-budget horror release based on the short film of the same name, the film seemingly has a lot going for it thanks to mild critical praise and plenty of positive fan reviews that proclaim it a sharp and terrifying excursion into the unknown. And while I do confess there is a lot of fun to be had with the film... I just can't help but feel it's a wholly mediocre experience in the end. It has a few good jolts and a handful of entertaining twists and turns, but it's quite a pedestrian affair. There's not much new here to be seen, and what is presented is often a slave to cliché and not all that interesting. And as a result... I don't really think it's particularly good or compelling.Annie Barlow (Caity Lotz) reluctantly returns home to attend the funeral of estranged mother. However, the already dreary event has taken an even darker turn... Annie's sister Nicole (Agnes Bruckner) has evidently gone missing and she is haunted by increasingly disturbing presences and dreams while inside of her childhood home. Soon enough, it becomes clear that something sinister is at play... and it may be connected to an old, unsolved murder case involving a figure known as the "Judas Killer."Written and directed by Nicholas McCarthy, there certainly is a decent amount to enjoy in the proceedings of "The Pact." The story takes a few fascinating twists and turns throughout its run-time and thanks to a relatively fast pace, you're never left overtly bored at any time. Combined with decent cinematography (at least for it's $400,000 budget) and some genuinely eerie set design, McCarthy's production is just competent enough that I cannot wholly dismiss the film or objectively say it is particularly terrible.What I can say, though... it's sub-par. Quite sub-par.From the first minute, the film feels quite uneasy with itself, and it has a tendency to meander on sometimes uninteresting sequences in an attempt at atmosphere-building. This would be admirable, but the film doesn't do much with the material outside of the most predictable of clichés... and even then, it doesn't do them particularly well. The second you see a character web-chatting with another, you know the person on the other end is going to ask "Whose that behind you?" The second the camera settles on a creepy door in the distance, you know it's going to slowly creak open and then cut to a shot of our lead looking frightened. The second the audio goes quiet, you know it's going to suddenly punctuate the scene with a loud crash. It's just so predictable as to lose all impact, and the film really only "got to me" in moments that were too few and far between to really leave me genuinely frightened.I also found the performances unanimously uninspired and dull. Particularly our lead Lotz, who is trying her hardest to play a tough-girl with a chip on her shoulder, but can't even come close to feeling real. I hate to say it... but I actually cringed a few times while watching her. And I'm not one to usually do that. It's all the more confusing because I actually quite like Lotz in other works I've seen her in... she's just dreadfully miscast here. Supporting roles by the likes of Bruckner and even Casper Van Dien seem well-cast but under-utilized and unable to do much with the material provided. And everyone comes across as just cookie-cutters of characters we've seen done far better in other, similarly far better films.McCarthy's visual guidance of the film left a lot to be desired for me, and it's just so textbook I couldn't find myself invested. Maybe it's just me... but it felt like just about every single shot in the film (at least in the first half) was exactly the same. Just long, smooth stedi-cam shots that follow the characters for a few moments, before letting them leave frame and cutting to the next long, smooth stedi- cam shot that followed them for a few moments before letting them leave frame. To me, it just screams "lack of thought." And even more, I felt his script was lacking and didn't have any common sense to it. Characters behave in typical "stupid mode" as is usual with horror films (one scene in the first fifteen minutes where Annie explores the house at night in particular had me laughing at just how ridiculously stupid she came across), there are some really jarring jumps in the tonality and genre at key points, and the focus seems to be a little troubled.Still, I can't say I didn't have a bit of a good time watching it. Maybe it's because the film was predominately a low-profile release, but I can forgive some of its faults. It's not really a terrible film. Just a mildly enjoyable but incredibly troubled one. That said... I can't forgive enough that I would go out of my way to recommend it. I would just suggest skipping it unless you're very intrigued by the premise. If you think this looks like the best horror film of the past decade, you might get some fun out of it. But in my mind, there are enough other, far better horror films out there. This is just sort- of a forgettable affair. You'd be better off checking out "Insidious", "The Babadook", "The Changeling" or "Session 9" for films with a similar tone that are executed with far more quality and style.I give "The Pact" a slightly below average 4 out of 10.

The movie is simple: A mother and her two daughters have been living in a house for 16 years. Both daughters hated the -- apparently -- "ueber-religious" mother. After the mother's death, the daughters set about taking care of the house, except that: one daughter disappears; and the sister who comes after seems to be experiencing spooky, ghostlike encounters. It turns out: The mother had been harboring her serial killer brother, Somebody Barlow (A. K. A. the "Judas Killer"), within a secret bedroom of the house. The ghost of one of Barlow's victims starts making contact with one of the daughters to reveal his hiding place and bring him to . . . justice?Overall, the movie just doesn't make any sense, although I enjoyed watching it.Good points:* Well-acted and well-filmed * Some good "shock" moments. (yes, the moments are a little overdone by now in the genre, but the effect was good, i. e. it made even ME jump a little: a long-time, grizzled Horror Movie buff! * Not too overwrought about being what it isBad points (unfortunately several and serious): * The main character, Nicole, had a real bitchy side that wore on me sometimes * During the denouement, the main character gets the usual case of the "stupids" as, instead of using each and every opportunity to escape from the killer, she instead wastes time trying to get a gun off a murdered cop's corpse and, then, makes every effort to alert the killer to her presence by trying to load said dead cop's gun -- wrongly: dropping the cartridge, of course ;-) -- and, then, slowly click-click-click loads the cartridge while the killer looks for her in the room. Dumb, stupid, imbecilic . . . * A cop (viz., Caspar Van Dien) brings a digital camera to the house to see if he can see anything spooky or "ghosty" in the camera's screen. He puts it down somewhere. Then, you see the killer walk across the camera's screen, except . . . the killer's form is NOWHERE in the background. So, are we talking about a ghost killer? No, we can't be, since the woman Nicole SHOOTS HIM square in the head later on! So, um, like, Director . . . what the heck's up with that? * Then, there's the whole problem of how this woman Nicole and her sister (who disappears early on in the film) have lived for 16 years in this small house without noticing that, . . . hmm, . . . there seems to be a whole lot of "extra house" on the house. That "extra house" is the 3rd bedroom wherein Barlow has been living secretly: with the bedroom door dry-walled over and only a small cut-out in a connecting closet for him to crawl out of whenever he wants to . . . y'know. Apparently, these two dumbo girls sleeping right next to this hidden room never heard anything, like (perhaps) Barlow dragging in the corpses of his victims or coming out to get something to eat in the kitchen or just the usual snoring. * For some reason, Barlow no longer actually uses the bedroom, rather preferring to live in the crawl space UNDER the room. Whuh? Does this make any sense to anybody . . . other, than to explain why nobody's in the room when discovered by Nicole and Officer Creek A. K. A. Van Dien? I guess, it had to look like nobody had been living there -- but, they still needed Barlow actually living in the room for the storyline to make sense. * Nicole does this whole "seance thing" in Barlow's bedroom to contact Jennifier Glick, one of his victims who is the ghost which has been spooking her. "What do you want me to know?" Nicole asks over and over. She also screams when the ghost actually responds to her questioning (stupid in and of itself -- she got what she was expecting, for pete's sake!). All of this talking and screaming is done just above the crawl space in which our dear Killer has secreted himself. He doesn't hear any of this? No -- he just crawls out of the (aptly named) crawl space to, y'know, get some rotten food from the fridge . . . cry in his dead sister's room . . . etc. . . . as if he couldn't just hear the commotion RIGHT FRIGGIN ABOVE HIM IN THE ROOM! * Oh, yeah . . . the song for the closing credits was completely inappropriate for this type of movie.

Nicole Barlow (Agnes Bruckner) is organizing her mother's funeral but her sister Annie (Caity Lotz) is reluctant to come. Nicole disappears in her mother's home. Annie arrives and attends the funeral while Nicole is missing. Cousin Liz, Nicole's daughter Eva and Annie return to mother's home. Liz goes missing. Nicole is attacked by an invisible force and barely escapes with Eva. The police doesn't believe her. Officer Bill Creek investigates with Annie and they find a mysterious room. She takes psychic Stevie and Stevie's brother Giles to the house.The movie starts off confused and not that compelling. Bruckner starts but she's not the lead. It's an opportunity to do something scary to open this movie but it doesn't do that. It's a bit of a muddle as Caity Lotz takes over. Haley Hudson makes a nice appearance as a weird psychic. It starts an interesting better atmospheric second half.