| Title | The golden age of horror: The Pact (2012) |
| Author | Chris Hornbostel and Grandy Peace |
| Posted in | Features |
| When | October 25, 2014 |
Chris: Here's a movie with some terrific ideas on how to create some wonderfully effective scares. It also has a decent (if derivative) broad outline of what should be a very solid horror movie plot. Early on, this feels like it will be a very good film..
Read the full articleI'm not sure if I see Lindsey Lohan when I look at Lotz. Do you have any screenshots of her holding a bottle of Jack? That might help.
Also... what was the titular "Pact"? Who had a pact with whom, and to do what?
And, they made a sequel to this. I have absolutely no idea what it is about, but the trailer looks just awful.
No idea what that pact was. We're never told. I suspect something between the mother and brother. What's crazy is that there's all kinds of stuff that the movie seems to depend on but that we're never told that runs all through this film. Then if you search you see the director/writer calmly explaining "Oh yeah, this was that, we cut that out," as if such interviews constitute fixing in post.
Stevie didn't discover the hidden room, Annie did with Sheriff Creek...how much time passed between when you watched the film and did this review?
I can't exactly speak for Grandy, but I'll say likely "A day, at most." You're right, though; it's Annie and Sheriff Aragorn who discover the secret room; the trio of Annie, Stevie, and her handler dude go in pretty soon afterwards, though.
Which brings me to another bit of empty-headed directing/writing. Uncle Charles (who apparently didn't hear Stevie shrieking and moaning in the secret room, as well as not hearing people clomping around in there constantly all of a sudden, after years), gets up, has his walkabout in the kitchen, and never seems too perturbed that the wall's been knocked down and his hiding place exposed. Silly, silly movie.
I wrote that part within a day of my first viewing. It was a small mistake.
Yeah, I kept expecting him to notice things were amiss and go searching the house for other people - was surprised when that didn't happen.
I think the movie has some issues (the closing bit with the peephole and the eye is such unnecessary sequel-baiting bullshit), but I don't agree that it's nearly as mismanaged as you guys seem to think. One of my favorite things about the movie, for example, is how little exposition it uses while pretty clearly establishing plot points via inference. The eye thing is a good example - you don't need expository dialogue on that. You can see that the mom doesn't have it, you can see Annie does, you know that their father "ran out" on them, and...well, I knew that eyes like that are quite rare and inherited, so combine that with the lingering camera shots on Charles' eyes and it's a pretty clear inference.
We also don't really need to know the exact details of their mother's clearly abusive tendencies, or how complicit she was with her brother's crimes (pretty definitely heavily complicit), exactly how estranged Annie is, why Nicole's daughter is in their cousin's custody, etc. We get enough to go on. (The killer was the "Judas" killer because he wrote letters signing himself as Judas, btw - this is established in the research Annie does.) And I think a lot of the reveals about the brother and his secret room, etc, are honestly pretty great.
But yeah, there are issues. The SFX are heavily unconvincing (that blood looks nothing like blood, the severed heads are so clearly wooden that I couldn't tell whose corpse was supposed to be under the house - I -assume- Nicole because of Annie's reaction), I still don't know why the ghost could (or would) fling Annie around the house but not the killer, and it's conceivably a bit of a plot issue that the secret room being exposed did not necessarily appear to have registered with the killer. Among a few other things. That said, I think that particular item is probably explicable. After all, he did kill (and conceal) Nicole, Liz, and the Sheriff from ambush on an individual basis. He couldn't really be expected to fix the wall (and might draw more attention if he did), and probably wasn't willing to reveal his presence to or attempt to take on multiple potential targets.
My final takeaway is how great that closet is. You see that ominous doorway opening onto darkness. You see it essentially devour two characters. You're waiting to see where the stairway that clearly -must- be behind that door goes - attic, basement...probably attic, since it's California. Aaaand...it's a closet. What? But indeed, it does go someplace sinister after all. Just not at all how you'd expect.
the movie was amazing accept when the cop died A LOT of blood came out in two diferent directions which is most annoying and not true AT ALL
another thing is that if you think about it pact? it makes NO sense and the fact that judas killed 38 people easily but so hard to just kill annie were was nicoles daughter when this all happened? why was it not all answered in the movie? many questions but still great movie
