The Pact revolves around sisters, Nicole (Agnes Bruckner) and Annie (Caity Lotz) who return to their childhood home after the death of their Mother. When Nicole is reported missing, Annie is left in the house on her own, when she is awoken in the middle of the night by bangs, open refrigerators and fallen photographs. What is it that's in the house with her? Why does she hate her Mother so much? And, what does the spirit want her to understand?
While The Pact isn't the most original take on the supernatural sub-genre of horror, it does offer some interesting points along the way. Just a quick look at the film's official poster will show you how generic this film seems to be, with the obvious nods to films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Frighteners that have used the iconic image of a face coming out of the wall before it.
However, I won't give too much away, but films are always better when it's personal to the main character, and The Pact uses this idea to it's advantage. The ghost isn't just some random spectre that has always been in the house. Annie quickly finds out who it is and is drawn into it's past to try and rid the house of the spirit.
That's where The Pact decides to shift gear from a haunted house film into a ghost investigation film and it suffers slightly from this. The film opens promisingly with some nice tension being built and the occasional jump scare. Long tracking shots through the house, through doorways and into the pitch black, leaving the audience waiting for something is just one example. A shadow darting across the background being another. Sometimes the Director, Nicholas McCarthy does seem to build tension up without a payoff of the actual scare, but the tension is sustained well throughout the opening that this doesn't cause too many problems.
When the film decides to change into an investigation film, which finds Annie visiting the police (a rugged and dishevelled Casper Van Dien) and a girl that can talk to the dead (Haley Hudson), it looses a lot of the tension. While there is still the occasional scare, it's not as relentless as the opening of the film, when Annie is left in her Mother's house on her own. However, some tension is still evident, as The Pact interestingly makes use of multiple suspects as to who the spirit could be. I often found myself thinking about who the ghost actually was, but unfortunately the film goes for the most obvious answer.
One small fault that I noticed in The Pact to be glaringly obvious was the music. Being a bit of a horror film geek, I always remember the story that John Carpenter would tell about Halloween, when he shown the first cut of the film to Producers without music and they said it wasn't scary enough. He then shown them the same film with music and they claimed it was the scariest thing they have ever seen.
That's where The Pact fails to make a lasting impression. It's use of music is so jarring that parts of the film that should be terrifying just aren't that scary.
Tension building music would start randomly, without any sense of a building scare. When characters were upset or scared, the film's signature retro music (which wasn't the least bit scary) would start. Most of the film used silence, which I thought was very effective. It seems that the film should have used a more subtle choice use of music, or none at all.
Having said that, the film was a pleasant surprise overall and was better than I expected. While the film does take a weird direction after the opening into a ghost investigation, the scares are peppered in enough to keep the tension going and the third act is pleasantly refreshing compared to most other supernatural films (although it does open itself to many questions and a few plot holes!)
*** / *****
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