The Pact

The explanations for what has been going on are weird, fantastical and sort of reasonable, within the context of the story, maintaining the film's sense of grounded directness up to the very end.

A tightly controlled low-budget chiller whose occasional moments of unexpected special effects are set up beautifully by long periods of suspense.

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 takes its time revealing anything specific about the horrors that hide in the family's house. For most of its running time, we don't have a good idea what Annie is up against, which makes the slow trickle of clues that much more tantalizing.