THE PACT (2012)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Nicholas McCarthy
Writer:       Nicholas McCarthy
Producer:  Ross M. Dinerstein
Stars:     Caity Lotz, Haley Hudson, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Sam Ball, Mark Steger, Dakota Bright, Agnes Bruckner, Casper Van Dien

Review Score:

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Summary:

When her sister mysteriously disappears inside their dead mother’s home, a young woman uncovers a dark secret hidden in her family’s past.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Following Judy Barlow’s death, Judy’s estranged daughter Nichole returns to the San Pedro, California home where she was abused as a child to sort through her mother’s belongings. While video chatting with her daughter Eva, Nichole notices an open closet door behind her. Nichole goes to investigate and disappears.

At the urging of their cousin Liz, who is caring for Eva in Nichole’s absence, Nichole’s sister Annie reluctantly returns to the Barlow home to learn what happened. Annie begins noticing strange things throughout the house such as inexplicably opened doors and food from the refrigerator dropped on the floor. After the funeral, Liz and Eva stay overnight in the house with Annie. That night, Liz disappears and Annie leaves in fright with Eva after a supernatural presence pulls her into the air.

Because of his previous familiarity with Nichole, police detective Bill Creek listens to Annie’s story, which no one believes. While staying in a hotel, Annie mysteriously receives GPS coordinates for the address 5550 Grosvenor Blvd. An Internet search reveals a photo of a blurred woman in a floral print dress standing near a park bench. While Annie examines the picture, the blurred woman changes her pose. Using an original blueprint, Annie researches the Barlow home and realizes that a wall exists where a bedroom should be.

Creek accompanies Annie back to the home where they tear down the fake wall and discover a Spartan room with eyeholes that can see into other rooms in the house. Rumored to have psychic abilities, Annie recruits high school acquaintance Stevie to help investigate the hidden room. Stevie has a violent seizure while inside the home. Stevie repeats the name “Judas” and later explains to Annie that there is a spirit trying to tell her something, but the spirit is not Annie’s mother.

Annie researches Stevie’s clue and learns that there was a serial killer dubbed Judas who terrorized the San Pedro area. Annie eventually connects that the woman in the Grosvenor Blvd photo is Judas victim Jennifer Glick. She also discovers a photograph of her mother with Jennifer Glick when they both worked together as schoolteachers. Annie notices in the photo that Jennifer is wearing the same necklace that her mother gave her as a child that she still wears. In the same photograph, Annie sees a strange man identified as Charles Barlow, an uncle she never knew she had. Meanwhile, Creek is killed while investigating the Barlow house on his own.

Using the cross pendant as a planchette, Annie draws a Ouija board on a floor in the house. She learns that the presence in the house is Jennifer Glick and that Judy Barlow’s brother Charles was secretly the Judas Killer. Afterwards, Annie hears a noise and watches from an eyehole as a gaunt man emerges from beneath a floorboard in the secret bedroom. She realizes that Charles Barlow is still alive and has been secretly living underneath the floor and in the house’s hidden room.

While Charles raids the refrigerator for food, Annie investigates the underground room. She finds Creek’s dead body and retrieves his gun, but she is unable to get off a shot before Charles captures her.

Annie regains consciousness to find herself restrained in a closet. She uses a wire hanger to stab Charles and cuts herself free after retrieving Charles’ dropped knife. Annie eventually recovers the handgun and kills her deranged uncle. When he dies, the doors in the home suddenly open, releasing Jennifer Glick’s spirit. In the aftermath, Annie signs over the deed on the house and assumes care of Nichole’s daughter Eva.

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Review:

Certain film critics are known for being heavier on personal anecdotes than they are on details related to the movie being reviewed.  Generally, I avoid being similarly indulgent to the degree that readers would feel the need to voice their complaints, although personal background is sometimes necessary for understanding why someone might develop a particular point of view.  “The Pact” has created a wide enough gap between those who think it is eerily brilliant and those who find it moves at molasses speed to warrant some probable perspective on why I fall into the former camp.

Growing up in the 1980’s, I used to terrorize myself with late night weekends spent watching “Tales from the Darkside” in syndication.  Sometimes, I had to calm myself down with “Maude” reruns before finally mustering the courage to turn off the lamp and go upstairs to bed.  This was because there was a large organ in the living room that was set just far enough away from the staircase to allow a slim person to hide behind.  Going upstairs in the darkness meant traversing past this deep black shadow where who knows what could be lying in wait.

Even at age 8 or 9, I was too old to believe in monsters, so here is what my terrified little brain imagined instead: I used to think how diabolical it would be for an intruder to quietly break in, see a little boy watching a horror show on television, and suddenly develop a wicked grin on his face.  Realizing my impressionable mind was conditioned for maximum fright, the intruder would sneak up the basement staircase, patiently hide behind the organ, and deliberately wait for me to turn off the light and walk past before grabbing my ankle and proceeding to do unspeakable things to everyone sleeping in the house.  What better way to give a kid a heart attack first, right?

Left alone in the house another time, a friend of mine once suggested searching for secret passages.  I told him that was a stupid idea.  For starters, the house wasn’t that old.  It certainly wasn’t labyrinthine either, and where on earth would a secret passage even lead to anyway?  He insisted.  I rolled my eyes and played along.  And lo and behold, we found one.  There was a hidden panel inside a closet that led to an empty crawlspace holding nothing more than the promise of tetanus if one squeezed in too far.  Still, the idea that there actually was any secret space at all hidden inside the house blew my mind.  From then on, I regularly envisioned all sorts of buried treasures and discarded secrets possibly hidden in unknown corners of the family home.

The preceding paragraphs are a roundabout way of explaining that a fascination for secret rooms and a fear of sinister presences hiding in dark corners are seeds planted deep in my head.  And “The Pact” mainlines directly into that vein with its creepy fusion of slowly smoldering paranormal mystery and serial killer thriller.

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The Judas and Zodiac killers have identical Wikipedia pages...

Sisters Nichole and Annie have different ways of dealing with the death of their abusive mother.  Annie would be just fine leaving those memories in the past and never setting foot inside her childhood home ever again.  Unfortunately for her, that is not an option when Nichole inexplicably disappears and Annie is called upon to investigate.  Annie’s cousin Liz also vanishes and things grow weirder still when a supernatural presence seemingly turns Annie into its own private ragdoll.

But “The Pact” is more than a haunted house ghost story.  What Annie discovers as she delves into her mother’s hidden history is a secret branch of the family tree and a string of unsolved murders attributed to a serial killer known as Judas.  Vengeful spirits and real-world maniacs subsequently collide in a genre-blending twist that provides a uniquely moody horror tale.

Without cobwebs, creaks, or Victorian parapets, “The Pact” manages to make a grim haunted house out of an average, modern home in suburban California.  And with smooth camera movements and carefully timed rhythm, writer/director Nicholas McCarthy drapes a heavy pall of sickly dread over the entire production.

A midpoint scene involves Annie and a police detective returning to investigate the house.  Annie’s hand shakes reticently as she puts the key in the front door and goes inside.  She then locates a false wall discovered earlier on a blueprint and proceeds to tear it down until a secret door is revealed.  The detective turns the knob and upon realizing the door is locked, he shoots a “what now?” look in Annie’s direction.  Annie brushes by him and retrieves a key to unlock the door.

What’s interesting about a scene like this, and “The Pact” has several more just like it, is how McCarthy chooses to play it without words.  It would have been easy, and unnecessary, to have the detective predictably exclaim, “the door is locked,” or to have Annie say, “hold on, I have a key.”  To have all of the communication between them take place through action and glances instead keeps noise in the movie literally and figuratively minimal.  As “The Pact” connects with a mind’s preexisting fears regarding the unknown and secrets dwelling in darkness, atmosphere is generated by regularly teasing the viewer’s imagination into filling in the quiet.

In his review of “The Pact,” Brian Collins of Horror-Movie-a-Day aptly associates Nicholas McCarthy’s film with Mike Flanagan’s “Absentia” (review here), and I could not agree more.  Having seen a pair of movies from both filmmakers, they each demonstrate similar styles with the way they craft horror occasionally punctuated by jump scares, but otherwise squarely intent on delivering a psychological experience of understated terror.  Tapping into childhood traumas and subconscious fears of the unknown is a less broad approach to horror than things jumping out and screaming “boo,” which is why such films end up with one camp firmly believing slow burn is boring and not frightening, and one camp expressing the exact opposite.

“The Pact” has a sluggish ramp-up where it risks disengaging from an audience uninterested in investing the patience it takes to feel the film’s full effect.  It’s an understandable aversion for those requiring more in-your-face frights.  Yet for those of us whose psyches always have a grain of uncertainty about what hides on the other side of a wall or inside a dark shadow, “The Pact” offers more than enough satisfying chills that can effectively burrow beneath one’s skin.

Review Score:  80

Click here for the review of the sequel, "The Pact 2."

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