The Devil's Pact

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.

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.

Every now and then a film comes along that breathes new life into an old genre. A film that makes you think...wakes you up...makes you take notice and become invested in it's twists and turns and intricacies.

Yeah, this isn't that film.

So this is a direct sequel to The Pact (2012) and it's exactly the same.

Muted, washed out color palette.

Strange and unprofessional lighting choices.

Technical problems regarding focus and overexposure.

And let's not forget the atrocious sound design.

Knowing that this film is a small, lower budget production one could maybe look past the obvious inexperience and lack of polish.

What I cannot look past is yet another film filled with completely unlikable and apathetic characters that I simply do not care about in any way.

Hence, the title of this review.

There is no way you can convince me that two separate films filmed approximately two years apart just happened to have an entire cast of people you simply cannot care about and probably actively dislike from scene one.

Coincidence? .... no way.

This must have been intentional.

The story is again, worn out and tired and the entire production offers nothing new or refreshing whatsoever.

The "jump scares" are amateurish and simply do not work.

The "suspense" is dull and drawn out and becomes boring really quickly.

The interpersonal dramas and emotionally charged situations are inconsequential and aggravating. You simply cannot bring yourself to care enough about any of these people to invest any time at all into their lives.

I was disappointed in the first film for all of these same exact reasons and I assumed that a sequel released 2 years after the first film would show some technical improvement, increased production value, better developed plot points and dialogue, and characters I actually wanted to go along with on the journey through the film.

What I got was a washed out muted mess full of aggravating events and plot holes, bad dialogue, horrible characters, and a collection of failed attempts to frighten me with tired, old, geriatric jump scares that fell flat every single time.

This is a failure through and through.

I was quite surprised to see that The Pact got a sequel, but that was a great movie and every successful movies these days gets a sequel i guess. What's no surprise is that The Pact 2 is inferior to it's predecessor in almost every way, cinematography which is very nice is on par and in the same vein as it's predecessor. The Pact 2 does also like the first movie build up the suspense through tension and atmosphere, but it only partly succeed and relies too much on cheap jump scares. Plotwise it's rather hard to follow and sometimes confusing to see the connections, especially through her nightmare visions and the supernatural elements. I also find the acting sometimes awkward and unnatural, especially FBI agent Ballard.