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Pact, The (15)

Pact, The (15)

Horror, Mystery, Thriller

As a woman struggles to come to grips with her past in the wake of her mother's death, an unsettling presence emerges in her childhood home.


The critical consensus

The Pact is a low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension in the old-school John Carpenter way, without adding much new of its own. It’s a promising, efficient debut for McCarthy, but any kind of originality isn’t part of the deal.

***(*)(*)Eddie Harrison, The List, 11/05/2012

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.

***(*)(*)Paul Bradshaw, Total Film, 30/05/2012

There’s lots of flickering lights but it’s this chiller’s batteries that are on the wane.

**(*)(*)(*)Siobhan Synnot, The Scotsman, 03/06/2012

Cue lots of flickering lightbulbs and Annie running around in a vest and short shorts (what is it about the presence of the supernatural that makes women want to lose most of their clothes?). Some goosebumps-inducing moments, though.

**(*)(*)(*)Alison Rowat, The Herald, 07/06/2012

By the time Annie elicits the help of a local psychic to spell out what’s happening with a makeshift Ouija board, any deal The Pact has made with horror fans hoping for a tense movie-going experience has long since been broken.

**(*)(*)(*)Alistair Harkness, The Scotsman, 07/06/2012

There are some very neat little scary moments, but the whole thing fails to hang together and the plot is muddled.

**(*)(*)(*)Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 07/06/2012

This is by-the-numbers, low budget genre filmmaking, nodding in the direction of both The Silence Of The Lambs and The Exorcist as it trundles to its pre-ordained conclusion.

Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent, 08/06/2012

Lots of over-the-shoulder camera work adds to the tension, along with a creepy performance by Hayley Hudson as an anaemic (not a good look) psychic.

**(*)(*)(*)Brigit Grant, Daily Express, 10/06/2012

Cleverly exploits aspects of everyone's childhood.

Philip French, The Observer, 10/06/2012

A good idea fights unsuccessfully for its life.

**(*)(*)(*)Sophie Monks Kaufman, Little White Lies, 07/06/2012

Where and when?

General release. Check local listings for show times.

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