Father Son Holy Gore

The Pact II. 2014. Directed/Written by Dallas Richard Hallam & Patrick Horvath.
Starring Caity Lotz, Camilla Luddington, Scott Michael Foster, PAtrick Fischler, Amy Pietz, Haley Hudson, Market Steger, Nick Micheaux, Brad Gunberg, and Suziey Block. Campfire.
Unrated. 96 minutes.
Horror/Mystery/Thriller

★★

The Pact came out of nowhere for me, and despite what others have said about the film I thought it was a creepy, effective little horror. There’s a great hybrid of supernatural and serial killer horror that makes for an interesting effect. Not every single bit of it worked, but it was still a good horror movie.

Then, there was a decision to move forward with a sequel. When I first saw this announced, even as a fan of the first, I didn’t exactly jump for joy at the chance to see filmmakers try and extend the success of the original. My biggest problem is that the idea was complex, but it also remained a small, contained type of story that played out well on that scale.
With The Pact II, I feel like they tried to widen the story too far, encompass too much, and instead of sticking with what worked there’s just too little well written in the script to make up for its downfalls. I actually think that, had it been treated better, there could have been something useful made out of this sequel; there were several good, interesting ideas in the script, but I don’t feel as if they were appropriately played out. What might have been, in another universe, a decent flick ends up as a whole lot of junk, and The Pact II is relegated to the land of abysmal horror sequels.
After the events of The Pact, we catch up with June Abbott (Camilla Luddington). She is a cleaner who takes care of crime scenes after police and investigation units have finished. Soon, June begins to have visions of the now deceased Judas Killer, Charles Barlow (Mark Steger). She tries hiding it from her police officer boyfriend Daniel (Scott Michael Foster). However, copycat murders mimicking the Judas Killer’s M.O begin. June’s visions become worse and worse, she sees herself committing the murders, as if she were the murderer herself, right in his shoes.
Eventually, June sees fit to track down Annie Barlow (Caity Lotz) to try and figure out what’s happening to her. They also try reaching out to Stevie (Haley Hudson), the medium, but she cannot seem to offer much help.
Through twists and turns, June comes to figure out who the copycat killer truly is, and experiences firsthand the revival of the Judas Killer’s murders.
For the most part what I thought didn’t work about this film is not that the script is poorly written, it’s the fact that this feels like too much an attempt to extend the first movie for no reason. I mean, the logic just doesn’t seem to be there. The script is well-written in the sense that the dialogue is not bad, nor are the characters; I actually thought June Abbott (Camilla Luddington) worked as a character, and she had history, a personality, flaws. So it isn’t the characters and the dialogue. What does not seem to work, at all, is how The Pact very much had a purpose for the supernatural/serial killer mash-up: Annie’s mother was so distraught over the pact she’d made with her brother Charles, the things he’d done, that her soul and spirit could not leave the house until Charles was dealt with, killed, whatever. So I thought that was spot on.
In opposition, The Pact II seems to want to extend the supernatural elements beyond what they were reaching for in the first place. I just don’t see the point in bringing out a copycat when there’s no great, only tenuous, links to the first film’s plot; this is just an excuse to try and cash in on a good indie horror picture.
Of course, it isn’t the first sequel to try and stretch out a premise from the film which it followed, but I just find that this one did not work in the slightest. There were creepy parts, no doubt. I found the first half hour of the movie half decent. But once everything sets in, then certainly after the tension ratchets up and the climax hits – you just realize how misguided the whole film is, truly.
SPOILER ALERT – TURN BACK OR FOREVER SHALL YOU BE SPOILED!
The Pact II is also guilty of using terrible tropes. I mean, how many times have we seen the whole ‘the cop is the killer’. I’m not saying that someone out there can’t reinvent that whole trope and turn it around, maybe freshen it up somehow. But this movie uses it and there is nothing fresh about it. They even go for the ole bait-and-switch, using two different law enforcement officers, a cop and an FBI agent (how original), to try and throw us off the trail. Tricky, tricky.
What makes me sad about this is that the screenwriters/directors of this movie, Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath, did an awesome little indie called Entrance, which I could not get enough of! Still can’t, I watch it frequently. A lot of people couldn’t stand it because it’s the slowburn to end all slowburn horrors. Honestly, even as a fan, I can admit that so much of the first half of Entrance is extremely snail-paced, and there’s not much going on. Yet underneath it all, the terror lurks. I’ll have to review it myself because it’s worth the watch. Stephen King also raved about it; I totally agreed with his review.
But anyways, it just saddens me to see Hallam and Horvath, who I thought were going to be somewhat different than most writer/directors in the horror genre, came out with a truly poor idea. The writing itself is not bad, it’s just the whole premise of what they wanted to do, it really does not work. For all the decent dialogue (though not all is good – some is certainly bad), the few scares, a dash or two of creepy atmosphere, Hallam and Horvath cannot break away from the dull stupidity of The Pact II‘s original premise. They should have left well enough alone and not done a sequel, honestly, but I suppose the original made enough of a splash producers wanted to milk this one. Too bad they brought in Hallam and Horvath, hope those two move on to something much better.
For all its crappy qualities, there are at least a couple decent performances in this movie.
Camilla Luddington does a good job with the character of June Abbott. I did actually like her as a character, even within the bad plot. Particularly, I thought it was neat how they had her cleaning up crime scenes; this sort of played into her personality, as well as the later story. I’ve never seen Luddington before, but I enjoyed her performance. Just came across the fact she does the motion capture and voice for the newest incarnation of Tomb Raider, which is pretty awesome.
Surprisingly, Caity Lotz returned as Annie. She isn’t in the entire film, but seeing her here was actually nice. The movie has beyond just a few faults, however, having Annie’s character back sort of rooted things a little more than I expected. Either way, Lotz is a good actor. She is subtle and not one of the Scream Queen types, which I personally dig. Too bad the plot of this movie is garbage, otherwise having Lotz return would’ve worked even better had they been able to come up with something more interesting and sensible.
Ultimately, I can’t give The Pact II any more than 2 stars without kicking myself. It just isn’t worth a higher rating.
There are a couple creepy moments. One that really creeped me out involves the picture above; Charles Barlow, now a ghost himself (dumb dumb dumb), walks up slowly behind June and caresses her as she learns the truth about what has really been going on. That’s definitely a memorable scene, and it came off real weird/unsettling.
Other than that, there isn’t much else. A few decent scenes, plus the anchor performance of Camilla Luddington + the brief time we get Annie (Caity Lotz) back, but otherwise this is a complete dud. It’s too bad, I really loved the first one, this just does it no justice. I honestly hope that Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath come out with something much better and more interesting than this on their next effort.