The Pact

Following the big blockbusters of The Avengers and Prometheus there was nothing of import released this week. This is the only reason that The Pact was on my radar.

PLOT: After their estranged mother dies Annie (Caity Lotz) heads home to attend the funeral with her sister Nicole (Agnes Brucker). When Annie arrives home she finds her sister missing and her family home abandoned. The longer Annie stays in the house the more she realises that she is not alone. On further investigation of the supernatural presence it becomes clear that it is warning Annie of a more sinister danger lurking in her house….. END PLOT

The Pact is typical low budget fare and it doesn’t offer anything new in terms of story telling nor does it provide any real scares. Then again it doesn’t try very hard to do either and you don’t have to look very hard to find holes in the plot.

The plot is very predictable and you can see the twist long before Annie does. Despite being several giant steps ahead of Annie the last twenty minutes do become very tense with the arrival of the true villain of the film.

The cast is made up of unfamiliar faces with the exception of Casper van Dien, the bastard love child of a very experimental threesome consisting of Josh Holloway, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Michael Biehn. Van Dien has some very decent stubble but the only purpose of his character is to pad out an already short running film (it clocks in at 89mins)

Holloway, Coster-Waldau and Biehn.  Eat a lot of Smarties and then squint and you can see it.

The Pact is obviously a low budget film and the effects are basic without looking overly cheap so I suppose they have to be considered a success. The low budget feel suits the film as it takes place in a rundown town where Christmas is miserable, girls pee with the bathroom door open and bras do not colour code appropriately with underwear or clothing.

The Pact is written and directed by a relative newcomer Nicolas McCarthy who has essentially remade his own short into a feature length film (IMDB).  McCarthy has stuck very closely to a tried and tested formula with found footage being the only technique which was not used.

This weekend I had a choice between Men in Black3 or The Pact. I have to say that it was my lack of interest in MIB3 rather than any great desire to see The Pact which swayed my decision. If there is nothing else on offer go and see it as it kills 89mins easily enough. It gets a 5.5/10. It probably deserves less but I am generous with my ratings these days.