Directed by: Nicholas McCarthyWritten by: Nicholas McCarthy
Cast: Caity Lotz, Agnes Bruckner, Casper Van Dien, Haley Hudson
Seasoned horror fans generally know what to expect from a haunted house movie these days. The protagonist or family with a troubled past moves into a house where tragic events have occurred years before. At some point, a creepy old woman/child/bald corpse pops up in the bathroom mirror to scare the crap out of us.
The Pact appears initially to fit this mold. Fortunately, the story diverges from the formula in an interesting way.
Two young women return to their childhood home to attend their mother's funeral. Neither has fond memories of the mom, whose strict approach to parenting has adversely affected them as adults.
Troubled Nicole (Agnes Bruckner) is first to arrive at the now vacant house. She hears strange noises and begins to suspect that she is not alone. When younger sister Annie (Caity Lotz) arrives the next day, Nicole is nowhere to be found. Annie's attempts to find her sister take a strange turn when she finds a hidden photograph of their mother standing next to an unknown woman.
Before long, Annie finds herself tossed around the house like a rag doll by an unseen force. Further investigation leads her to the sinister realization that the house is linked to a serial killer known as Judas.
Writer and director Nicholas McCarthy manages to construct an effective thriller despite some major flaws that weaken the credibility of the script. One involves a ghost that can physically manipulate some people and not others. There may be an explanation for this, but it requires the audience to connect too many dots. Rather than provoking us to think, we are forced to compensate for sloppy writing.
Also problematic are the exaggerated stereotypes that pass for characters. Annie is a motorcycle-riding rebel with the body of an NFL cheerleader, who frequently walks through the parking lot of her motel clad only in underwear. Skeptical yet supportive detective Creek (Casper Van Dien) is perhaps too conveniently handsome and newly divorced to be believable. There's even a goth chick medium (Haley Hudson) who coincidentally went to school with Annie and knows how to talk to spirits.
The characters are cheesy, but still likeable enough that we want to see them solve the puzzle. Once Annie accepts the possibility of a supernatural explanation, she pursues it with gusto. The pace quickens and the movie develops into an enjoyably bizarre ghost story.
The woman in the photo is predictably the source of much of the film's eeriness. Yet she is not a retread of the vengeful spirit seen in other recent films like 2010's Insidious and 2011's The Caller. Similarly, the truth about the Judas killer, while far-fetched, provides a fun plot twist that seems clever rather than manipulative.
McCarthy also avoids trotting out the cliché mirror gag, replacing it with a few Internet-era tricks involving webcams and Google maps. It's likely that a J-horror franchise has employed similar techniques at some point, but their use here is novel enough to provide the necessary scares.
The Pact is slightly cartoonish and frequently awkward. While it's not going to redefine the genre of haunted house films, it's not a huge step backward either. Horror fans looking for old-fashioned creepy thrills could do far worse.
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