The Horror Show
The Pact II by Dallas Richard Hallam
and Patrick Horvath
I hate it when film studios find the need to make needless sequels. Especially sequels that have almost nothing to do with the original movie. I was hoping this wasn’t going to be the case with The Pact II, however when the original writer/director has nothing to do with the sequel what can you expect?
The first film left off with Annie gaining custody of her niece. She was staying in her mother’s house that turned out to be haunted. The ghost was victim to the serial killer known as Judas. Together the ghost and Annie were able to kill Judas and put the spirit to rest. It was also heavily implied that Judas was the father of Annie as they both had heterochromia.
So now, let’s just forget about all that. Let’s meet June, the protagonist of The Pact II, because a film franchise following the same characters is too easy. The film acknowledges that Judas was in fact killed by Annie in the first movie. However, there seems to be someone out there copying Judas’ MO. At the same time, a spirit reaches out to June, however, she is unsure whether the spirit is that of the deceased serial killer or someone else. Then, just to appease fans June needs to seek the aid of Annie and Stevie from the first movie. Together they need to determine if the spirit of Judas is behind these killings or if it’s someone else.
The main flaw with this movie is that it follows the exact same formula as the first. Some people die. Girl is visited by a spirit. The spirit is thought to be malevolent. Girl teams up with a young psychic. Spirit is actually the victim of the killer. Psychic leaves because someone close to psychic thinks that the psychic needs to be protected. Spirit and Girl must work together to learn who the killer really is. Girl finds out that she may be the daughter of Judas. Killer is stopped. Judas’ ghost makes an appearance. Seriously, how did Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath think that not a single person would realize this was the exact same movie as The Pact? Maybe, this was supposed to be a statement? A movie about a copycat killer needs to be a copycat movie, right?
This film also wins for having the most predictability points in a movie. Since it’s pretty much a duplicate of the original film, it wasn’t hard to predict what was going to happen. Because they removed the man-living-in-the-walls gimmick from the first movie, they needed a new serial killer. Like most movies do, the serial killer is someone who was already introduced over the course of the movie. The movie tries very hard to convince the audience that June is being possessed by Judas and killing people. But once June is out of the water, the film takes on a whodunit feel. The movie attempts to point some fingers but they’re all false positives. The real killer isn’t the one who you’d least suspect or the one who you most suspect, it’s always-always-always the middle suspect. It’s the guy pointing fingers but doing nothing that makes him seem guilty.
On another note, once Annie is reintroduced, she comes in as the resident expert. Just because she had some experience with ghosts and serial killers she is suddenly a total badass grounded with one foot in the movie and one foot in reality. Despite being partially grounded and making an occasional fourth wall breaking joke, she has absolutely no clue that apparently bad guys never come back as ghosts to continue killing, it’s only the victims seeking peace. She also manages to be the most unintelligent character in the movie. June offers to accompany Annie in her investigation, but Annie basically says, “Screw you, I’m too cool for school. Besides you’ll only slow me down.” Needless to say, that doesn’t end well.
Then, there are the plot holes. A vast majority of the movie is spent gathering clues, trying to piece together who actually killed Ellie. Despite this, the only reason June is able to figure out who the serial killer actually is, is because the serial killer accidentally leaves his serial killer scrapbook out. That kind of makes everything June and Annie did up until that point, well, pointless.
I wasn’t particularly invested in the first movie in all honesty. I thought it was okay, on the other hand my girlfriend got really in to it. Now she rarely watches horror movies with me so I thought The Pact II would be a good movie for us to watch together. She managed to get equally invested in this one. I on the other hand was much less so. I know many of the tropes when it comes to horror movies and my girlfriend doesn’t. This made me realize that horror movies like this aren’t for the hardcore fans. They’re for the general audience, the people who actually still get scared watching horror movies. I guess that in those terms, this movie was a success. This movie wasn’t loaded with anything super entertaining or clever, it was meant to hook a casual audience.
Will I watch another movie from The Pact franchise? Probably not, I’m glad I did watch this one though. It gave me a level of understanding as to why lots of horror movies are predictable and made the way they are. I do wish the movie broke away from the formula of the first. I was honestly hoping this movie was going to be about ghost-Judas killing from beyond the grave. Sadly, this was not the case. Maybe the cliffhanger from is alluding to a killer-ghost for the next film, if there even is a next film. However, I’ll only break my pact of never watching any of these movies again unless I have confirmation the next one is good.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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