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The Pact review

Ghostly goings-on in a dead mother's house

Reviews
By Paul Bradshaw published 30 May 2012

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The ghost in Nicholas McCarthy's low-budget debut is tech-savvy, using webcams and GPS apps to drum up scares, but it isn’t quite enough to save spruced-up clichés from lapsing into kitsch.

After her mother’s death, Nicole (Agnes Bruckner) moves back to her childhood home then vanishes after ghostly goings-on; when sister number two (Caity Lotz) arrives, the bumps in the night get louder as she digs into family secrets with a detective (Casper Van Dien).

It works hard, and the first half hour is textbook creepy, but the oldschool grab-bag of shocks struggles to jolt a dour script to life.

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