The Pact

So, to follow up on Wednesday's viewing of Jaws, the plan was to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. The powers that be were against me yesterday, so instead I ended up watching The Pact. For those of you that haven't seen the trailer, it's basically a slightly spooky tale that mainly revolves around a house and the things that went on at said abode.

Even the spirits can't decide whether it's worth watching this flick

The general gist is that a mother has died and her daughters go back to the area for the funeral. I guess you could say that they set out to use the deceased mother's house as a base of sorts. The film starts off with one of the sisters, Nicole, already at the house, passing time and having a bit of a 'tense' conversation with the other sister via the marvel of a telephonic device. Nicole then proceeds to have a conversation with her daughter via some form of Skye device. This is when you get the first sense of the spooky, as the young daughter on the other end of the Skype display asks her mother who the person there with her is. The big surprise here is that the mother is alone. Slightly creeped out, she proceeds to have a little look around the small house. Cut to the other sister, Annie, looking like a cross between Melissa George and Patsy Kensit, arriving a few days later, on the day of the funeral, only to find that Nicole has gone missing. It's touched on that Nicole has a past history of drug abuse and going missing for days, so the cynical Annie doesn't think too much of her sister being missing. That is until she wakes up in the middle of the night to find her cousin has gone missing from the house, then has a moment where she is literally dragged around the house by an unseen entity. Safe to say, she escapes the house and takes her small niece with her as she flees to the police station.

Casper Von Dien doing his best Tony Stark impression

Upon arriving at the police station she's interviewed by Starship Troopers' very own Casper Von Dien (also of the so-bad-it's-good-but-still-just-actually-rather-bad Dracula 3000). He's interested in the disappearance of Annie's sister and cousin, but Annie does the 'it wasn't me, Guv'nor, it was them pesky spirits' routine. Casper's cop doesn't really believe her but decides, as she's got pert, bouncy breasts, to at least check out the house in question. When the two of them enter the house, all is relatively normal until they come across a covered up door that Annie never knew existed. Casper takes some pictures during this and that's about it. Annie goes off to stay in a Motel, where she has some funky dreams. All of this leads to Annie bringing a blind psychic to the house. This is when the film starts to get into a bit more of the supernatural horror vibe that's promised in the trailer. From then on in there's a few twists and turns, as well as a few choice scares.

The film as a whole isn't horrendous, although it does seem to fall flat at the times when it looks like it's about to deliver the goods. Just as the film starts to get going, it seems to stagnate and then flip things in another direction. Whilst this can often work in a film's favour, with The Pact it does it at the wrong time. It tends to be going down the right avenues but then has a change of heart, leaving you with a slightly subdued response. The pacing of the film also feels a little off. It drags out parts of the story that don't need dragging out, yet skims over other plot points that could easily be elaborated on. At times the film hints at past trauma experienced by the two sisters at the hands of their mother, yet you never really get a clear cut answer to this. It's not even overly implied as to what has gone on previously. When the end does finally come, you're left with a feeling that the whole story covered could have easily have been done in about 30 minutes less running time. The film isn't overly long, running at just over 90 minutes, but the actual parts of the story that are covered don't necessitate 90+ minutes.

The poor man's equivalent to being frozen in carbonite

To sum up, the film is worth a watch and it does have it's charms, just don't go into it expecting anything particularly groundbreaking. I left the film with a sense of unfulfilled potential, a sense of what could have been. There's some good scares, there's some tense moment, there's Casper Von Dien and there's some bouncing bosoms. It just feels like there could have been so much more.