The Pact (2012)

What makes it different from others?

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

I watch a lot of horror movies and it takes a lot to scare me. If you are afraid of ghosts and haunted houses and if you watch this one alone, with all the lights out, it will scare you.

The movie is simple: A mother and her two daughters have been living in a house for 16 years. Both daughters hated the -- apparently -- "ueber-religious" mother. After the mother's death, the daughters set about taking care of the house, except that: one daughter disappears; and the sister who comes after seems to be experiencing spooky, ghostlike encounters. It turns out: The mother had been harboring her serial killer brother, Somebody Barlow (A. K. A. the "Judas Killer"), within a secret bedroom of the house. The ghost of one of Barlow's victims starts making contact with one of the daughters to reveal his hiding place and bring him to . . . justice?Overall, the movie just doesn't make any sense, although I enjoyed watching it.Good points:* Well-acted and well-filmed * Some good "shock" moments. (yes, the moments are a little overdone by now in the genre, but the effect was good, i. e. it made even ME jump a little: a long-time, grizzled Horror Movie buff! * Not too overwrought about being what it isBad points (unfortunately several and serious): * The main character, Nicole, had a real bitchy side that wore on me sometimes * During the denouement, the main character gets the usual case of the "stupids" as, instead of using each and every opportunity to escape from the killer, she instead wastes time trying to get a gun off a murdered cop's corpse and, then, makes every effort to alert the killer to her presence by trying to load said dead cop's gun -- wrongly: dropping the cartridge, of course ;-) -- and, then, slowly click-click-click loads the cartridge while the killer looks for her in the room. Dumb, stupid, imbecilic . . . * A cop (viz., Caspar Van Dien) brings a digital camera to the house to see if he can see anything spooky or "ghosty" in the camera's screen. He puts it down somewhere. Then, you see the killer walk across the camera's screen, except . . . the killer's form is NOWHERE in the background. So, are we talking about a ghost killer? No, we can't be, since the woman Nicole SHOOTS HIM square in the head later on! So, um, like, Director . . . what the heck's up with that? * Then, there's the whole problem of how this woman Nicole and her sister (who disappears early on in the film) have lived for 16 years in this small house without noticing that, . . . hmm, . . . there seems to be a whole lot of "extra house" on the house. That "extra house" is the 3rd bedroom wherein Barlow has been living secretly: with the bedroom door dry-walled over and only a small cut-out in a connecting closet for him to crawl out of whenever he wants to . . . y'know. Apparently, these two dumbo girls sleeping right next to this hidden room never heard anything, like (perhaps) Barlow dragging in the corpses of his victims or coming out to get something to eat in the kitchen or just the usual snoring. * For some reason, Barlow no longer actually uses the bedroom, rather preferring to live in the crawl space UNDER the room. Whuh? Does this make any sense to anybody . . . other, than to explain why nobody's in the room when discovered by Nicole and Officer Creek A. K. A. Van Dien? I guess, it had to look like nobody had been living there -- but, they still needed Barlow actually living in the room for the storyline to make sense. * Nicole does this whole "seance thing" in Barlow's bedroom to contact Jennifier Glick, one of his victims who is the ghost which has been spooking her. "What do you want me to know?" Nicole asks over and over. She also screams when the ghost actually responds to her questioning (stupid in and of itself -- she got what she was expecting, for pete's sake!). All of this talking and screaming is done just above the crawl space in which our dear Killer has secreted himself. He doesn't hear any of this? No -- he just crawls out of the (aptly named) crawl space to, y'know, get some rotten food from the fridge . . . cry in his dead sister's room . . . etc. . . . as if he couldn't just hear the commotion RIGHT FRIGGIN ABOVE HIM IN THE ROOM! * Oh, yeah . . . the song for the closing credits was completely inappropriate for this type of movie.

This is a beautifully and thoughtfully made horror/thriller that manages to sustain the creep factor throughout. I won't be spoiling anything by telling you that it's a supernatural tale. This establishes itself quite early on in the piece which I initially found disappointing. I'm partial to those slow burn movies that leave you wondering if there is a supernatural element going on at all. The fact this film introduces this early on certainly does not take away from chill factor and manages to maintain a strong sense of mystery which adds to the unsettling nature of the story.You get to establish a great empathy for the main character, Annie, thanks largely to the great performance of Caity Lotz while she tries to figure out what the hell is going in her childhood home after her mother has passed away and why her sister has disappeared. The home and setting is a character in itself. A very small, drab home with 60's/70's decor becomes an incredibly creepy setting, even with the bright San Pedro sun shining outside which filters into the home in a dark golden glow as you get to explore every inch of it during the film. Knowing that Annie and her sister's childhood was traumatic at the hands of their mother adds to the malevolent personality of the house. The atmosphere of this film reminds me a little of Absentia, another great film you should check out.There were moments where my heart jumped without the use of the clichéd, annoying jump scare which seems to be popular these days. A sense of dread builds and builds to a very satisfying climax. The less you know about this going in, the better. Check it out, it's well worth it.

Wow what a bad movie! Such an unprofessional production. For example: you hear a baby crying from inside the house. And you ask yourself - a baby? where is there a baby? and then you realize it's supposed to be the 4 year old girl crying. They think a 4 year old girl sounds like a one year old baby when she cries.The movie is so slow in unimportant parts, and so uninteresting nor scary on the other parts. What is "the pact" that the movie is named after? they never say, you can only guess. What happened to the missing characters? Who knows. This was such a time waste.