THE PACT 2 (2014)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Dallas Hallam, Patrick Horvath
Writer:       Dallas Hallam, Patrick Horvath
Producer:  Ross M. Dinerstein
Stars:     Camilla Luddington, Scott Michael Foster, Mark Steger, Amy Pietz, Suziey Block, Nicki Micheaux, Haley Hudson, Patrick Fischler, Caity Lotz, Trent Haaga

Review Score:

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Summary:

When a series of copycat murders and paranormal phenomena points to a possible return of the Judas Killer, a young woman discovers that a family secret connects her to the crimes.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Special Agent Terrance Ballard, the original FBI profiler on the Judas Killer case, arrives at a Southern California crime scene where a young woman named Ellie Ford was found decapitated. LAPD officer David Myer tries stopping Ballard at the apartment’s front door, but Ballard goes over his head to Lieutenant Eileen Carver. The words “he showed me the way” are found written in blood on the bedroom ceiling, indicating that the crime may be the work of a Judas copycat killer.

David goes home to his girlfriend June Abbott, who works days as a trauma scene cleaner and nights as a comic book artist. June has periodic visions of an unknown woman and begins drawing her as part of a graphic novel. David gifts June a ring before she leaves to take her mother Maggie to a twelve-step meeting.

After doing background research at the police station, Ballard pays a visit to David and June. Ballard shows June a picture of Ellie Ford. Despite drawing the woman from her visions and dreams, June claims to not recognize Ellie. Ballard asks if June has had any contact with Annie Barlow before telling June that she may be a target of the Judas copycat. Not realizing that June does not already know, Ballard reveals that June’s birth mother was actually Jennifer Glick, the Judas Killer victim whose spirit haunted the Barlow home. Ballard gives June some of Jennifer’s possessions before she asks him to leave. While going through the items later, June is frightened from her home by a shadowy apparition.

June angrily confronts Maggie over lying about her parentage. Maggie confesses that she was Jennifer Glick’s sister. Frightened by a horrible nightmare later, June returns to Maggie’s house and discovers her dead body. During the subsequent investigation, Ballard questions June about the argument she had with Maggie prior to the murder.

As the haunting visions continue, June secretly uses David’s LAPD credentials to contact and to leave a message for Annie Barlow. Ballard then finds June trespassing at the Maggie Abbott crime scene and the two of them have a confrontation. June discovers a bible page in Maggie’s medicine cabinet that she matches to a bible belonging to Jennifer Glick.

Annie returns June’s phone call. While keeping the information secret from David, June tells Annie that she thinks the murders are not the work of a copycat, but that Judas has somehow returned. Annie takes June to see Stevie, the young medium who helped Annie with the spirit in the Barlow home. Stevie provides only a cryptic warning before a man she lives with closes the door. June tells Annie that she thinks Judas wants her because he may be her biological father.

June and Annie try to contact the spirit in June’s attic. The song “Down in the Valley” by The Radiators suddenly begins playing downstairs. June tells Annie that the song is from her dreams and was playing when Ellie Ford was killed. Annie goes into a trance and says the words “pink room” before she and June are each knocked unconscious in separate incidents. When June recovers, Annie tells her that she is going alone to investigate Ellie Ford’s apartment.

David calls Ballard with his suspicions that June may know more than she admits about the case. June finds a newspaper ad for an erotic photography studio named “The Pink Room.” June visits the studio and learns that Ellie Ford worked there as a model.

At Ellie’s apartment, Annie takes photos of the record player, which includes a sticker of Texas depicted with the numbers 7-1-3, a Houston area code. Someone then attacks Annie and stabs her in the back through a door. Before she dies, Annie texts the cell phone photos to June.

Back at her home, June receives another visit from Ballard. David calls and warns June that Ballard is actually the Judas copycat. David tells June to get out of the house and promises that he is on his way with a squad car. June knocks out Ballard with a brick and ties him to a chair.

David arrives and puts a gag in Ballard’s mouth just as the agent regains consciousness. David leaves the room to supposedly call the other officers. In a living room cabinet, June sees the ring David gave her spinning on a shelf. June investigates and finds a lockbox. She opens it using 713 as the passcode and discovers erotic pictures of Ellie Ford. June realizes that her boyfriend David is actually the Judas copycat.

David returns and tries persuading June into helping him murder Ballard, claiming that it is who she really is. A vision of the Judas Killer emerges from the floor and embraces June. David gives June the knife to stab Ballard, but she uses it to stab David instead. A struggle and chase breaks out amongst June, David, and Ballard. When a door opens by itself, seemingly by Ellie Ford’s spirit, June uses the distraction to club David in his head with a bat and then kills him before he can shoot Ballard. June reexamines the attic and finds the severed heads of Ellie Ford and Maggie Abbott.

Some time later, Stevie calls June with a cryptic message reportedly from Annie claiming that it is starting again. Stevie then hangs up and a reflection of the Judas Killer is seen in the mirror in front of June.

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Review:

One thing for which writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s “The Pact” (review here) is best remembered is its distinct atmosphere of creeping fear fogging the edges of every frame.  With his follow-up film “At the Devil’s Door” (review here) evoking a similar quality of slowly seeping tension, it’s clear that this particular style of haunted house horror owes a significant debt to McCarthy’s filmic fingerprint.

Something else his movie did was to end its individual arcs on mostly definitive notes.  A quick sting before the end credits left the sequel door ajar, in a somewhat cheap fashion, although only by a slim crack.

Considering how uniquely haunting “The Pact” was and how narrow the options appeared for a second installment, “The Pact II” is as effectively managed a sequel as one could reasonably expect without the original creator returning to steer the ship.  New franchise stewards Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath don’t find the same steady stride that “The Pact” had, but they get enough of the flavor in the pot that their take on the tone tastes as though it comes from the same world.  Part of that sensation comes from coloring scenery with the same jaundiced patina that lined the original.  Another part comes from the unfolding intrigue of a murder mystery linking two realities.

It’s only been one week since Annie Barlow put a bullet in the brain of her uncle Charles, a.k.a. The Judas Killer.  That’s how long it took for another young woman to turn up dead in a murder that the LAPD and the FBI jointly suspect may be a copycat crime.

June Abbott works as a trauma scene cleaner, a custodian whose specialty is scrubbing suicide-induced grey matter off living room walls.  She also moonlights as a Jack Davis-inspired comic book artist.  Imagine June’s surprise when the woman she has been drawing from her strange recent visions turns out to be the same person whose blood now soaks her sponge.  Things grow even odder when the special agent investigating the case warns June that she may be the new killer’s next target, based on a connection to Judas she never knew she had.

Although he is a police officer, June’s boyfriend David isn’t the one she turns to for dot connection when ghostly activity starts plaguing their house.  June instead tracks down Annie Barlow, because June doesn’t think this is the work of a copycat killer at all.  Despite being dead, June believes that Judas has somehow found a way to return, and he wants revenge.

As setups go, “The Pact 2” stretches believability only far enough to work out a sensible story covering the same mixture of paranormal poltergeist and tactile serial killing that its predecessor had.  Melding both premises has become a hallmark of the series, even at just two entries, and it puts “The Pact 2” on a trajectory similar to how the mystery of “The Pact” played out.  Good luck to another sequel in bridging that gap a third time without really coming off as forcibly shoehorned.

There’s no denying that the deeper the film goes in stirring up scares, the heavier it leans on typical tropes like flickering lights and unexpected reflections in medicine cabinet mirrors.  Once the back half of the script moves its attention away from spooky mood moments and onto late-breaking exposition, the dun-dun-dun plot turns become telegraphed at worst and overlookable at best.

Preventing “The Pact 2” from being swallowed whole by routine, redundancy, and revelations wobbling on shaky narrative ground are performances that engage even if the momentum does not.  Camilla Luddington has the right amount of screen presence to inflate June with texture when the screenplay has her more flatly defined.  Recognizable character actor Patrick Fischler similarly gives a big boost of personality to an otherwise stereotypically obsessive FBI profiler with a sneer persistently hinting at being in on a secret that no one else knows.

Caity Lotz’s connection as Annie Barlow is wafer thin.  In truth, the part she plays in the story could be accomplished by a new or different character entirely.  Annie isn’t required.  Though superfluous or not, no one is going to complain that a movie has too much Caity Lotz, especially when her screen time is as short as this.

Lotz’s elevated cameo is nowhere near as brief as Haley Hudson’s reappearance playing doe-eyed medium Stevie in another role no one would miss if the actress opted not to come back.  Mark Steger also returns as Judas, and still gives Doug Jones a run for his money as the go-to silhouette for a frail-framed creep.

A less refined way to summarize how “The Pact 2” plays in relation to its predecessor is to think of the individual entries in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series.  Some installments focused on black comedy.  Some focused on dark terror.  Some were certainly better than others.  None of the numbered entries hit quite the same keys as Wes Craven’s original, and yet all still feel like they belong to the same saga.

“The Pact 2” doesn’t satiate every desire fans might have for a second chapter.  It echoes much of the visual look and touches on the same themes that made the first movie a memorable chiller.  It also steps onto well-worn paths that make it too closely comparable to formulaic horror-crime thrillers.  Then again, it is no more possible for filmmakers Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath to fully duplicate Nicholas McCarthy’s methods and achievements than it was for James Cameron or David Fincher to mirror Ridley Scott’s.  Keeping that in mind with regard to “The Pact 2,” expectations should be leveled accordingly.

Review Score:  75

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