The Pact (II) (2012)

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.

Director:

Nicholas McCarthy

Writer:

Nicholas McCarthy

Stars:

Caity Lotz, Mark Steger, Agnes Bruckner

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview:
Caity Lotz	...	Annie
Kathleen Rose Perkins	...	Liz
Haley Hudson	...	Stevie
Sam Ball	...	Giles
Mark Steger	...	Charles Barlow
Agnes Bruckner	...	Nichole
Casper Van Dien	...	Creek
Dakota Bright	...	Eva
Petra Wright	...	Jennifer Glick
Sam Zuckerman	...	County Clerk
Anjini Taneja Azhar	...	Hindi Child (as Anjini Azhar)
Rachael Kahne	...	Waitress

Storyline

Nichole Barlow comes to San Pedro with her daughter Eva to attend the funeral of her mother. She calls her estranged sister Annie to help her to resolve pending businesses, but Annie is too traumatized with the bad treatment spent by their mother and does not want to return to their childhood home. Nichole convinces her sister to come and she arrives to the funeral. However, Nichole goes missing and Eva stays with Nichole's cousin Liz. When Liz also disappears, Annie claims that supernatural events happen in the house but she becomes the prime-suspect. The open-minded detective Bill Creek assumes the investigation and realizes that there is something weird in the house. Meanwhile Annie summons the medium Stevie believing that the ghost of her mother is responsible for the vanishing of Nichole and Liz. But the woman warns Annie that there is a great danger in the house. Annie decides to go further in her investigation and discovers dark secrets from the past of her family.

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Plot Keywords:

beheading | stalker | police officer | police officer stabbed | assailant | 

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Taglines:

The Future Is In Their Hands

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some strong bloody violence and language

Details

Official Sites:

Screamworks Records [se]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

8 June 2012 (Ireland)

Also Known As:

I symfonia

Filming Locations:

San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Preferred Content

Technical Specs

Runtime:

89 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The motorcycle Annie rides is a 1970 Honda CB350.

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Goofs

The motorcycle used by Annie in the beginning is a Kawasaki, but later on is a Honda.

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Connections

References The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972)

User Reviews

Underrated indie horror gem and my favourite horror film of the year

When I rented this I thought that for some reason this is part of the recent, underwhelming wave of exorcism films. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this features no Catholic propaganda and biblical incantations and after having watched The Pact twice now (the second time with a group of friends who all really liked it), I regard it as the best horror film I've seen this year.

The Pact doesn't re-invent the wheel, it is a fairly traditional ghost story (with touches of MR James and J-horror in its use of "haunted technology"), but it is the best directed horror film I've seen this year. The cinematography is always inventive without being flashy, establishing a real sense of place, important for any haunted house film. It also has fantastic sound design. The film avoids cheap jump scares to build a slow burning atmosphere of genuine dread. While neither weird nor surreal, the way the film generates scares reminded me more of David Lynch, than the cheap shock tactics you usually get in this type of film. I saw Lynch especially in the way a character gets swallowed up by the darkness behind a door. A scene set to a deafening rock music drone is reminiscent of a sequence from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

After the rather poor period haunted house films I've seen recently (The Woman in Black, The Awakening), which rely on all the clichés of the genre (dolls upon creepy dolls, ghostly children in white make up failing to look scary) I loved how this was set in an impoverished, modern blue collar town in the US. The house itself looks just slightly 'off' with a 'wrong' layout and subtly oppressive wallpaper, instead of being decorated like amusement park ghost ride.

The way the mystery slowly unfolds is cleverly handled and satisfying (and really quite creepy when you think about it). This makes for a great re-watch, when I picked up on a lot of hints and details that I missed first time round.

I'd never heard of lead actress Caity Lotz before. Playing a character who is tough on the outside but also quite vulnerable due to a traumatic past, she did a fantastic job anchoring the film emotionally. The fragile looking actress who plays the role of the medium you often get in haunted house films (here seemingly recruited from a crack den) looks and gives a performance that is genuinely disturbing. I had not seen Casper Van Dien in anything since Sleepy Hollow. His "He-Man" face always struck me as slightly comical, but he is fine as a sympathetic cop, looking a little more grizzled than in his Starship Trooper days

In some ways the film is reminiscent of the Kevin Bacon starring Stir of Echoes from the 90s, but I think this does a better job with similar material.

The Pact is only let down by the 'blah' title and awful promotional art, which looks like the dated looking CGI spook from The Frighteners, a visual that doesn't appear anywhere in the film.