Annie (Caity Lotz) reluctantly returns home to attend her abusive late mother's funeral. Upon arrival, she learns that her sister Nichole (Agnes Bruckner, THE WOODS) has mysteriously disappeared, having failed to pick up her daughter Eva (Dakota Bright) from her friend Liz (Kathleen Rose Perkins). Annie suspects that her sister has simply taken off for a few days, but Nichole has left laptop behind (seemingly in mid-use) at her mother's house, and her phone is found inside the closet where they were sent to be punished as children. When Liz and Eva spend the night with her at the house after the funeral, Liz also vanishes and a supernatural force attacks Annie (who barely escapes with Eva). The police disbelieve Annie’s story, but there are signs of a struggle and two missing women. When the map function of Annie’s smartphone repeatedly points her to a nearby park where the last known victim of uncaptured local serial killer was discovered, Annie starts to believe that her mother's ghost trying to communicate with her. The further discovery in her mother’s house of a hidden third bedroom (with peepholes looking into all of the surrounding rooms) has Annie seeking out the help of a high school friend Stevie (Haley Hudson) with mediumistic powers to discover the connection between her mother and the killer (who may still be at large from beyond the grave).

The feature debut of writer/director Nicholas McCarthy, THE PACT – which originated as a ten-minute short that played at Sundance in 2011 – is shot-through with the usual modern horror antics that were tiresome by the time INSIDIOUS rolled around (shadowy figures darting across the frame in the foreground or background, David Lynch-ian surround channel rumblings, jangling music stings, jump scares), and the story is not particularly original. The execution, however, is refreshingly unnerving thanks to a long build-up that suggests McCarthy knows that the audience is going to be checking each line of dialogue and each visual and aural detail against every other recent haunted house film for borrowings or downright rip-offs (what is more evident is an obvious affection for horror forebearers). The entire sequence involving the medium's exploration of the house is excellent, but the film starts to fall apart once the menace becomes more corporeal; the climax, however, is still suspenseful (even if the stinger ending shot feels even more nonsensical than usual). Lotz is excellent in what feels like a one-woman-show. Casper Van Dien (STARSHIP TROOPERS) appears as an investigating detective but his role adds very little to the story, and Bruckner's screen time (in what is virtually an opening teaser recreation of the entirety of the 2011 short) is more like a cameo. Sam Ball, one of the two stars of the 2011 short version, has a showier supporting role here as medium Stevie’s violently-protective handler.