The Pact

Written and directed by Nicholas McCarthy, "The Pact" stars Caity Lotz as Annie, a young woman who returns to her childhood home following the death of her mother. Her sister and cousin have disappeared and it appears that there is some supernatural entity inhabiting the house. As Annie digs deeper, she learns of a serial killer whose last victim may have had some kind of connection to her mother. Annie begins putting the information together, revealing shocking and terrifying secrets.

Sound clichéd? Well believe me, it's not. What starts out as your typical run-of-the-mill haunted house film becomes one of the most intriguing and horrifying horror movies of the year. Not many movies scare me half as badly as "The Pact" did. I can tell you honestly that this film messed with my head and left me fearing my own house.

Caity Lotz does a great acting job, especially since she has such little dialogue. She really gets her feelings across by body movement and facial expressions. Another actress who really stands out is Haley Hudson, who plays Stevie, Annie's friend who just happens to be able to contact the dead. It is her character that scared me the most.

The movie also has some very good cinematography, especially when Annie walking throughout the house. Rather than constantly cut to new angle every time she turns a corner, the camera follows her with one continuous shot, immensely adding to the suspense.

The best part about the movie is that it doesn't assume that the audience is stupid. One of my least favorite things is when all questions are answered by the characters talking to themselves, or even to other characters. In "The Pact" the audience is given the information, and we are required to put it together ourselves. I have seen the movie twice now and certainly picked up on some small things that I missed in my first viewing.

The final plot surprise terrified me and I definitely won't forget it anytime soon. I didn't care for the very end (as in the closing shot), but it didn't ruin the whole movie for me.

Overall, "The Pact" is one of the scariest movies this year and a very well done horror movie. Not many low-budget horror movies are able to maintain the constant level of suspense that "The Pact" did. I highly recommend this to any horror fan. "The Pact" is currently available on Netflix Instant Streaming.

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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.

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.