The Pact
1/4
Starring: Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien, Hayley Hudson, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Agnes Bruckner
Rated R for Some Strong Bloody Violence and Language
In order to enjoy "The Pact," you have to be both inattentive and stupid, although I'm not sure if that will help. More testing is required, but doing so would probably be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. This is a really bad movie. It's dumb, nonsensical and so boring it threatens catatonia.
Nichole (Bruckner) is having a rough time. She's gotten sober and has temporarily left her daughter Eva (Dakota Bright) with a friend. And her mother has died, but their relationship was terrible, so she's doing the planning out of obligation than love. Then when she goes to check on something in a dark place, she goes missing. After three days, her friend Liz (Perkins) is worried. Then she goes missing too, and something invisible has scared the living hell out of Nichole's sister, Annie (Lotz). She goes to the police, but the detective thinks she lost all credibility when she mentioned something supernatural. Desperate to find her sister and her friend, Annie digs into her mother's past, and finds some nasty skeletons.
There's not one thing worthy of faint praise. Okay, fine, there are a few successful shocks and Hayley Hudson, who plays the obligatory clairvoyant (who is, of course, blind and vulnerable), is pretty good. Everything else is either terrible, or not even bad enough to warrant that descriptor.
The script is completely underwritten, which says a lot about Nicholas McCarthy's talent (or lack thereof). The film keeps explaining things as it goes along, which means boredom. The characters do a number of amazingly stupid things (to the point where it is painfully obvious that they are props of the script and not real people). Adding insult to injury, he's in over his head as a director. His shot selection is so unorganized that the house where just about everything takes place seems to have a layout that changes from scene to scene (I hate it when that happens). Maybe Annie's time would have been better spent investigating that instead of what happened to her dumb sister and her equally dumb friend.
The acting isn't much better. Star Caity Lotz is boring. I didn't care what happens to her. And what does it say about a film when the best you can get for a lead role is Casper Van Dien? I haven't seen him in many movies, but the man has the range of a block of cement. Paul Verhoeven was smart and talented enough to use that to his advantage when he made "Starship Troopers," but the same cannot be said of McCarthy, who is the poster child of ineptitude. Agnes Bruckner got good reviews for her performance in the indie film "Blue Car," but she's only adequate here (probably because she just took the check and ran after filming her one scene).
This movie is so bad that I predicted the ending halfway through. Considering how bad I am at predicting whodunits, I think that says enough.
Wait, one more thing...the movie doesn't even bother to answer the film's main plot line (although it's easy to guess), that's how bad it is!
Starring: Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien, Hayley Hudson, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Agnes Bruckner
Rated R for Some Strong Bloody Violence and Language
In order to enjoy "The Pact," you have to be both inattentive and stupid, although I'm not sure if that will help. More testing is required, but doing so would probably be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. This is a really bad movie. It's dumb, nonsensical and so boring it threatens catatonia.
Nichole (Bruckner) is having a rough time. She's gotten sober and has temporarily left her daughter Eva (Dakota Bright) with a friend. And her mother has died, but their relationship was terrible, so she's doing the planning out of obligation than love. Then when she goes to check on something in a dark place, she goes missing. After three days, her friend Liz (Perkins) is worried. Then she goes missing too, and something invisible has scared the living hell out of Nichole's sister, Annie (Lotz). She goes to the police, but the detective thinks she lost all credibility when she mentioned something supernatural. Desperate to find her sister and her friend, Annie digs into her mother's past, and finds some nasty skeletons.
There's not one thing worthy of faint praise. Okay, fine, there are a few successful shocks and Hayley Hudson, who plays the obligatory clairvoyant (who is, of course, blind and vulnerable), is pretty good. Everything else is either terrible, or not even bad enough to warrant that descriptor.
The script is completely underwritten, which says a lot about Nicholas McCarthy's talent (or lack thereof). The film keeps explaining things as it goes along, which means boredom. The characters do a number of amazingly stupid things (to the point where it is painfully obvious that they are props of the script and not real people). Adding insult to injury, he's in over his head as a director. His shot selection is so unorganized that the house where just about everything takes place seems to have a layout that changes from scene to scene (I hate it when that happens). Maybe Annie's time would have been better spent investigating that instead of what happened to her dumb sister and her equally dumb friend.
The acting isn't much better. Star Caity Lotz is boring. I didn't care what happens to her. And what does it say about a film when the best you can get for a lead role is Casper Van Dien? I haven't seen him in many movies, but the man has the range of a block of cement. Paul Verhoeven was smart and talented enough to use that to his advantage when he made "Starship Troopers," but the same cannot be said of McCarthy, who is the poster child of ineptitude. Agnes Bruckner got good reviews for her performance in the indie film "Blue Car," but she's only adequate here (probably because she just took the check and ran after filming her one scene).
This movie is so bad that I predicted the ending halfway through. Considering how bad I am at predicting whodunits, I think that says enough.
Wait, one more thing...the movie doesn't even bother to answer the film's main plot line (although it's easy to guess), that's how bad it is!
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