A young mother speaks to her toddler daughter via an online video-calling service. “Mommy,” says the kid, “Who’s that behind you?”
No one is there, maybe, in “The Pact,” a tightly controlled low-budget chiller whose occasional moments of unexpected special effects are set up beautifully by long periods of suspense. A young woman (Caity Lotz) whose mother has just died and whose sister has disappeared discovers a secret room in their childhood home where dark deeds were carried out. She learns more thanks to a clairvoyant (the Shelley Duvall-ish Haley Hudson, who brings an otherwordly freakishness reminiscent of Samantha Morton in “Minority Report”).
Familiar elements such as a dark family secret, a ghost and a Ouija board start to seem trite after a while, and the third act is a little ridiculous, but debut writer-director Nicholas McCarthy does a lot with a little and seems fully prepared to handle a big-studio horror project.