Runtime: 89 minutes
Release Date: June 6, 2012
Rating: R
Director: Nicholas McCarthy
Nicole (Agnes Bruckner, "Vacancy
2: The First Cut) is staying at her mother's house, finishing up the
preparations for the woman's funeral. While using her laptop to talk
to her daughter, we learn that her sister Annie wants nothing to do
with the house or the funeral, citing issues that they shared with
their mother. When her daughter asks who is standing behind her,
Nicole quickly turns around and vanishes.
Annie shows up to look for her sister
but only finds her cell phone and computer left behind. Left alone to
deal with all of the plans, she manages to pull things together.
After suffering through some bad dreams, Annie wakes to find a man
standing right outside her bedroom door. Though she instantly climbs
to her feet, the man is gone and a presence in the house physically
attacks her.
As Annie has never seen a horror movie
before, she promptly calls the police. Casper Van Dien shows up at
her door, looks around, and doesn't really see anything. He does
manage to suggest that she possibly helped her sister disappear, and
since a cousin is also missing, he briefly wonders if she is a serial
killer. None of this really matters though because Annie quickly
discovers that her family has a connection to a series of unsolved
murders attributed to someone called Judas, and that the ghosts of
her mother's house are sending her a message.
"The Pact" is a taunt
thriller that manages to introduce a few scares. I'm actually a
little surprised by the amount of hate that this one gets because I
thoroughly enjoyed it. Bruckner's scenes end within the first ten
minutes, but those scenes are packed full of suspense. When her
daughter said that she saw someone behind her, I literally did one of
those little internal cringes.
I hate revealing spoilers, but the big
problem that I had with this one is the ending. If you haven't yet
seen "The Pact," go ahead and skip the rest of the review.
After fighting with unknown spirits and
getting directions from the ghosts, Annie discovers that the Judas
killer was actually her uncle. Her mother knew about it and helped
him hide out in her home, which might explain some of the abusive
actions that she took towards her daughters. Now, if this was a film
where the ghosts wanted to help Annie discover the truth about her
life, I would be on board.
Instead, the ghosts want to warn her
that Judas is still around, as in, he still lives in the basement of
the house. He killed her cousin and sister and stored them both in
the basement. He manages to come and go whenever he wants without a
single person ever seeing him. He actually crawls right past her and
out a hole in the wall, and he doesn't notice her there. It's implied
that he did this multiple times while she and her sister were there.
I totally get that their mother wanted
to protect her brother but come on! Did it never cross her mind that
she might want to warn someone that there's a crazy serial killer
living under her house? Like say, I don't know, maybe any future
owners? The ghost in the house manages to help her kill Judas, and
then she runs off to live with her niece, who the film clearly showed
she had no relationship with before.
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