The Pact

Okay, sure, it's not a groundbreaking horror film (what is nowadays?), but I found myself enjoying it. I usually don't watch films below a 6.0 IMDb rating (yeah, yeah, I'm a ratings wh***, shut up). But I was really in the mood for a horror movie and decided to give this a try. Yeah, it's a traditional story and somewhat predictable, but the modern "offbeat" characters kept it interesting. I agree with the user that says it starts off a bit weak/slow, but the rest of the story kept me intrigued. I've seen (modern) horror movies that are far worse than this that have higher ratings so give it a try if you enjoy modern horror.

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.

Nichole arrives back at her childhood home to take care of business after the death of her mother. She calls her sister, Annie, for help but after getting no joy, she carries on without her. It's during a video call with her daughter (who's being cared for by her cousin, Liz) that something happens to her. After a couple of days, Annie decides to help after all, but she discovers that Nichole has gone missing and not before long Annie starts to hear strange noises and is actually attacked by an unseen entity. Not before long, Liz also goes missing, so Annie decides to seek help to find out what is going on...is it a violent spirit hell bent on creating misery for Annie or is there something much deeper going on? The Pact is actually not too bad of a psychological thriller, but in all honesty it is actually pretty slow. It takes a good while for the movie to really get going, but when it does it picks up quite nicely. It's just unfortunate that it takes a while to do this with a bit too many stop/start moments in between.

The feel and atmosphere of the movie wasn't too bad either, and what made these moments better was that there was no "music getting louder" moments. I find the lack of dramatic music in movies like this much more enjoyable as it adds to a better mood. There are some nice touches throughout the movie as well and with being a low-budget film some of the visuals are done well.

I think Casper Van Dien must have had more practice at acting as well because he was actually pretty decent here unlike the hideous over-acting done in Starship Troopers. There are definitely more pluses than negatives for The Pact, but I just wish that it managed to keep a better pace for the 1st half of the film.

Overall, though, it's not too bad of a movie.

As a woman struggles to come to grips with her past in the wake of her mother's death, an unsettling presence emerges in her childhood home.

First, let me praise Casper VanDien, who (to put it bluntly) did not suck. I cannot say he is particularly known for his superb acting, having done a number of cheesy movies, but VanDien shows off his acting chops here. This kind of performance could get you a supporting actor Oscar if it was not in a horror film.

I heard the judges at Sundance were praising Nick McCarthy's direction, and that is absolutely fair. Above all else, the camera is the star here. Maybe we should give that credit to the cinematographer (Bridger Nielson), but it is hard to draw that line -- could one have been great without the other? Alan Bacchus said that the film was "smart, well written and genuinely scary". He is right on all three counts. I rarely find horror films scary (I am immune to their nonsense), but I actually had to peek through my fingers at one point. I am embarrassed to say it, but this is true. Well done!

Just for clarification, I started to see this movie on a Saturday night, almost asleep and exhausted so, you can pretty much see that my expectations were not so high, in fact, The Pact started slow and I was almost done for in the first minutes.

But, even when the premise was done and re-done a thousand times, the movie somewhat got my attention, enough to watch it till the end.

The pact focus on 3 sisters that got a bad deal in their childhood due to an abusive mother, so, the movie start with them and slowly develops into a one-girl deal. Almost the entire movie is focused on Annie, acted by the beautiful Caity Lotz, one of the sisters in search of the truth about their past. This could be somewhat a mistake if the movie didn't knew how to handle the situation, but, in this case, having only one primary character and almost no development of other characters makes the movie more interesting since she does a beautiful job on screen. Make no mistake, this is not a dialog movie, the majority of scenes happens in silence, which is great since the objective is to capture the look and feel of our main character and I must say that it worked, at least for me.

The storyline is incredible simple but contrary to other movies that fail miserably, in this one it works and works because the movie relies on images more than anything.

It's not a perfect movie for it had it's flaws but the result gave a positive outcome to all this, plus Caity Lotz is gorgeous on this movie, a nice and fresh look to see on screen.

The Pact is a movie undecided of it's genre, a mix of suspense/horror with paranormal and thriller... The Pact does contain a little piece of each genre and does avoid the obvious clichés which is a nice welcome.

Balanced acting, a lot of suspense, almost no horror and some paranormal into the mix makes this movie somewhat a nice touch for a Saturday night if your expectations are not high, I will still watch it once more just to see Caity Lotz :)

Is not a bad movie and definitely not the disaster the other reviewers say it is, there are a tons of movies 10 times more expensive than this one with worse outcome so I can pretty much assure you... This is better than average.