The second film to screen at the 2012 Toronto After Dark
Festival’s summer screening was The Pact,
by first time feature debut director Nicolas McCarthy, remains to be not a
totally conventional scary ghost story that has an unexpected twist towards the
discovery and conclusion of its storyline. Although a low budget cross genre
horror/mystery film it successfully brings out those perfectly timed chills and
thrills that we have seen play out in such familiar ghostly hauntings of Amityville
Horror and Paranormal Activity. Nicole Barlow (Agnes Bruckner) from Blood and Chocolate returns to her
family house after her mother’s death to take care of her belongings and other
things and it’s here when we first witness the looming ghostly presence that
haunts the house.
Nicole calls her sister Annie (Caity Lotz), a strong headed
biker chick, who refuses to come help her take care of funeral arrangements of
their estranged deceased mother with whom they seemed to have had a rough
childhood growing up. Later during a skype conversation with her daughter we
get to see the first signs of interference as she eventually loses the signal and
sees a closet door open off its own accord. This is the night that Nicole
disappears. This is where Annie comes into the mix, who pretty much leads the
rest of the film when she arrives at the house to discover that her sister is
missing. At first Annie does not make much of it in light of Nicole’s
irresponsible past behaviour until she gets the first taste of a paranormal
encounter in the house. One of the best things done in this film is when we see
Annie flee the house upon her first such encounter as opposed to what you
usually see happen in regular horror films where the stupidity of messing out
with the unknown completely boggles my mind. Light on dialogue, the strength
lies in the setting of the house which is quiet, dry and dark making just even
being in it ideally cold and creepy; especially when Annie begins to see and hear
strange noises, flickering lights, falling objects and a certain GPS mapped
location on her phone. However, the big
difference in this film is that all the unusual activity that takes place has a
meaning that leads up to (although not perfectly due to a couple loose plot
holes) connect with the missing puzzles
of the picture.
We see most of the feature through Annie’s lens who delivers
a strong performance through merely her emotions displayed via expressions,
reactions and body language something that as of recently I saw done quite well
by Daniel Radcliffe in certain scenes of The Woman in Black. The perfectly
utilized supporting acts of Casper Van Dien as a police officer and Haley
Hudson as a blind psychic are brought in towards the final acts of the film
when Annie frightened after seeing and hearing things seeks out help to figure
out what is going on in her mother’s house. Through the medium, Haley’s help and the
eventual overcoming of initial disbelief and ignorance Annie begins to realise
that the ghostly encounters are not an attack on her but are merely
attention-seeking, trying to connect with her, eerily reminding me of events
that we saw in The Haunting. The result
is the discovery of a room that she never knew existed which then leads up to
the final story reveal which is a complete shift from the tension and anxiety
that had been build up throughout the first half of the film.
The experimental mix of genres may not appeal to everybody’s
taste, unless you are a hard-core fan of the horror genre, but surely it was a step forward in providing
both the standard, yet perfectly timed scares as well as adding something
completely new and fresh to the usual run of the mill scary Friday night
paranormal thriller which definitely makes it worth the watch.
Feel like you missed out? No fret! Be sure to check out the
next set of spooks that will hit the Bloor Cinema on July 11, 2012 screening Detention,
a horror cult comedy and some scary found footage in V/H/S starting at 7PM.
-Myra Rehman
@myrawales
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