The Pact

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.

A woman's mother dies. She calls the rebellious younger sister to see if she will attend the funeral. She then chats with her daughter who lives with her cousin. During the chat the daughter asks her who's behind her. She sees no one but looks around the house. Then she vanishes.

During the funeral the little sister, Annie, does show up. The daughter and the cousin are there and spend the night at the house. Next morning the cousin has vanished.

Annie goes to the police. One night some force grabs her and yanks her throughout the house. Annie does some digging. There's a picture of her mom and a woman in a park. She also has visions of this woman.

When the cop visits her house they discover a secret room with holes in the walls to observe everyone else in the house. When the cop returns to the house by himself he's stabbed to death.

Annie meanwhile has a medium come over who experiences things. As she leaves she utters the name Judas. Annie discovers there was a serial killer in the area years ago who was known as Judas. He killed the woman she sees in the visions. Annie goes to the park and is led to a church/school where her mean mom worked. She finds out a man worked also there who has their same last name. He was a brother of the mother no one knew about. The medium tells her to do a Ouija session. It provides her with more answers and Annie will confront the evil in the house.

The Pact is a well-done lower budget horror thriller. Why it's called "The Pact" is entirely unclear. It's a slower movie but it's effective. Music and effects are very good and you do want to find out just what is going on. The story combines human evil with the supernatural in a convincing way. It could easily have chosen either of those but together they make things more interesting. Direction is excellent and the cast does a solid job as well. My main complaint is the casting of Caity Lotz as the main character. They already hired better choices in the lovely Kathleen Rose Perkins and Agnes Bruckner. The story is a bit short as we learn next to nothing of our main character or the family.

"The Pact" is a treat for fans of this type of horror/thriller film. The basic plot seems simple enough -- a young woman's sister convinces her to come back for their mother's funeral, despite the fact that the two sisters were estranged from their mother for a while. When she comes back, her sister is gone, and strange, supernatural things begin to happen...

"The Pact" has a lot going for it. First of all, there is no forced romance to make us roll our eyes. Secondly, the lead character behaves like you'd expect a person to behave! When weird things start happening, she books out of the house. When she has to go back, she brings a policeman. When she gets in danger, she screams and flails and kicks. There are still some "Why is she doing that?" sequences, but a LOT less than usual in this type of film. And finally, NO IDIOTIC TWIST ENDING THAT MAKES NO SENSE BASED ON THE REST OF THE MOVIE!

But the best thing this film has going for it is Caity Lotz. The best part, by far, of MTV's cool but sadly departed "Death Valley," Caity is very easy on the eyes and she really shines in this role -- it's a virtuoso performance. And it needed to be -- a good portion of the film is her alone, so the entire film is on her shoulders and she carries it off. Very impressive, and I hope we get to see more of her in the future.

The film is not perfect -- a major plot is given away in a serious "deus ex machina" moment, there are some plot holes that the movie ignores, and I'm still not totally sure what the very last shot of the film is supposed to mean (maybe it will be explained when the DVD is released). But there is WAAAAY more good than bad, and it's worth seeing and supporting.

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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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.