Critic Reviews

More horror movies set in the 21st century ought to integrate technology into their scares as well as Nicholas McCarthy's The Pact.

When The Pact descends, finally, from suggestion to explication, the scares regrettably slink away.

Familiar elements such as a dark family secret, a ghost and a Ouija board start to seem trite after a while, and the third act is a little ridiculous, but debut writer-director Nicholas McCarthy does a lot with a little and seems fully prepared to handle a big-studio horror project.

It works hard, and the first half hour is textbook creepy, but the oldschool grab-bag of shocks struggles to jolt a dour script to life.

For her part, Lotz carries the load with such briskly efficient confidence, it's no surprise to learn that she's already got several more movies on the way.

In the end, like a lot of genre movies, this one pulls from different inspirations, and so weighs in, by turns, as overly predictable and satisfyingly recognizable (part of genre cinema's one-two punch).

The Pact demonstrates both why people respond to horror and why it's so routinely scorned.

Nicholas McCarthy's The Pact is a horror film developed from a short, and unfortunately it splits apart while being stretched out to feature length.

Lotz's grudging fortitude provides enough engagement to let you overlook the cracks in the film's facade, but when she cedes the screen to Casper Van Dien's thick-witted police detective, all you can see are the gaps.

A musty ghost story that morphs into a sluggish serial-killer mystery, Nicholas McCarthy's film tries to distinguish itself by minimizing dialogue and settings, a stripped-down approach that extends to sketchy characters and a script rife with convenient, easy-to-assemble clues.