The Devil's Pact

Well, I should have stuck with my gut instinct and not actually delude myself into thinking that they might do a whole lot better with the sequel, because the first movie was a snooze-fest. "The Pact II" is much akin to the first movie, also being a snooze-fest with very little happening throughout the entire course of the movie.

For a horror / mystery / thriller, then there is surprisingly little thrilling or shocking about this movie, aside from the fact that so little could happen over such a long course of time.

I will say that the acting in the movie was good, and people were doing good jobs with their given roles. And it was nice to have Caity Lotz reprising the role of Annie, although that did very little to lift up the rest of the movie. Patrick Fischler did a good job with his particularly odd role as Ballard, and he was actually the most memorable in the entire movie.

Story-wise, then "The Pact II" does continue on from the first movie, but again, it is nothing interesting, so don't get your hopes up.

It was progressively becoming more and more of a struggle to sit through this movie, and more than once did my attention start to drift away because the movie offered very little that captures the audience.

At least the first movie had a moment or two that was impressive, but "The Pact II" does not.

"The Pact II" scores a meager 3 out of 10 stars from me, and that is based on the acting, the camera-work and the production value. The rest of the movie is most likely to be forgotten as soon as you get out of the chair once the movie ends.

June Abbott (Camilla Luddington) is a young woman that lives with her boyfriend, the police officer Meyer (Scott Michael Foster) and works cleaning up crime scenes. June has dreadful visions at home of the deceased killer Judas and his victims and she draws her visions in her leisure time expecting to make a book. When her stepmother is cruelly murdered in a copycat crime, June believes that Judas must have returned from the afterlife. But she becomes the prime suspect of the FBI Agent Ballard (Patrick Fischler) that is investigating the cases. June contacts the former victim of Judas, Annie Barlow (Caity Lotz), expecting that she might help her. But when Annie is murdered, Meyer warns June that Agent Ballard is the copycat killer; but June is alone at home with Ballard. Will she survive?

"The Pact II" is a movie with a reasonable story but a messy screenplay and bad acting of Patrick Fischler and Scott Michael Foster in the roles of two important characters. The plot is hard to be followed and I slept two consecutive nights trying to watch "The Pact II". Only yesterday night I succeeded in watching this movie, but I do not recommend it. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Pesadelos do Passado 2" ("Nightmares from the Past 2")

This movie is like a long journey by an old train - boring, a bit senseless and a bit of joy at the end that it has finally come to an end. Fans of the genre can easily skip it, but if someone is bored, it can be seen.

I'm going to get straight to the point here and say that The Pact 2 is absolute garbage and it is definitely one of the worst movies you'll see this year. How anyone can actually think that this is better than the first film is beyond me as well.

I rated the first movie 5-Stars simply because I found it a bit slow going and was a bit hard to stick with, but other than that it was a decent film to watch. This second one, however, doesn't even come close to touching the first one as at least that film had a bit of atmosphere, suspense, and some creepy moments here and there.

This second film one had none of that.

I won't go as far to say that I had huge hopes for this sequel because it's not as if it was being promoted as one of the "scariest" or "creepiest" movies of the year, but it was still a let down and I was hoping for more considering what the first film had.

The acting was pretty poor as well from a couple of the main cast members, the main one being Camilla Luddington who played June Abbott. Her performance was less than convincing and it was more wooden than Pinocchio (probably won't come as a surprise that she's mainly a TV actress). The other pretty poor performance was from Patrick Fischler who played FBI Agent Ballard. I think he was trying to play the character as having this deep, mysterious, many layered persona but just came across as a pretty creepy, but bland, stalker-type of character. Even Mark Steger, who plays Judas, didn't have the same creepy presence as before.

Was the film scary? No. Was it suspenseful? Never. Was it thrilling? Ha, yeh right! What it was, though, was boring, pretty unimaginative, poorly written, poorly acted, and just an utter waste of time.

I'd recommend giving The Pact a watch, but as for this tripe of a sequel, I'd give it a wide berth if I were you.

Amazing how the screenplay can make simple scenes look very tiring. Each conversation are twice the length of normal movie's, one might press fast forward or skip a chunk of it and still be at the same agonizing slow pace. Acting is limping, it has small cast and half of it are awfully delivering rigid performance. It feels disjointed at every corner, even the scares are poorly constructed and overly used.

Story is an inconsistent struggle to bring supernatural theme and mystery thriller, both of which fail at making any momentum. It's crucial to highlight the FBI officer, which is the weakest character on the small roster. Every time he's in the screen, he brings inhumanely stiff performance. If this is an effort to build mystery, it's highly misguided. Random passerby reading the script out loud would probably be more capable.

The boyfriend and mother roles are also awkwardly played. They never seem to be convincing nor do they sync well with others. Thus, Camilla Luddington as June, the troubled girl and returning Caity Lotz, as Annie are the most decent, by default. To their credits, both of the female actors try to set-up the horror and they do have better screen presence.

Nevertheless, the scenes are either plodding or rushed. Caity Lotz doesn't feel as she's introduced to the story naturally, she just pops up and becomes instant best friend with Luddington's June. Their interactions are more fluid than most, unfortunately the movie doesn't take advantage of that. Luddington isn't entirely bad, she has good expression, but she must deal with insipid screenplay which makes her looking bizarre and enacting the same motions repeatedly.

There might a few scares with flicker lights or angle shifts, yet even these instances are overly done. Without spoiling anything the mix between paranormal and mystery doesn't pan out well. The Pact 2 instills more boredom than horror or dread.