Synopsis: After their mother passes away, sisters Nicole and Annie reluctantly return to their childhood home to pay their last respects. While staying overnight in the house, the sisters sense a mysterious presence in their midst: noises startling them in the night, objects moving about, a fallen picture of an unknown woman posed next to their mother. Annie begins experiencing a series of intense and disturbing dreams visions that lead her to uncover something terrible about her mother’s past that is finally revealing itself.
Shock spoke to star Caity Lotz in a video interview right here.
Shock Till You Drop: Regarding the history of The Pact, it had its beginnings as a short film. Did you have a feature film mapped out in advance or did the short serve as merely a means to break in?
Nicholas McCarthy: The short wasn’t a made as a trailer or teaser for a feature. The short was really made because I had a story I wanted to tell. It was made out of a sense of frustration because I had spent years making short films. I started to write scripts four or five years ago and developed my voice as a filmmaker. The shorts I was making were not genre, they were character pieces, but the features I was writing were horror movies. I had been a life-long obsessive fan of the genre and writing features came naturally. The difference between The Pact short and all of the other shorts I made was that it was horror. And it’s an unusual horror movie is more like a character study but it uses atmosphere where I was channeling a lot of Dario Argento in the way it was shot. I made it and never thought about where it was going. But it got into Sundance, they accepted it and people would come up to me and say, “Your movie scared the shit out of me.” And that’s when I realized I might have a skill at directing horror. That was a thrill for me. After Sundance in 2011, I had a meeting with Content Media and they said they wanted to make a feature out of my short.
Shock: And in making that leap from shorts to a feature film, what surprised you the most about what you were capable of doing?
McCarthy: I had spent years making shorts and the last few had sets that were run like regular film sets. The people I surrounded myself with were pros. On The Pact short, it was like a regular movie set – but one being made on my credit card. On the feature, I was comfortable and it was exciting. Like a lot of people interested making movies, my whole life was steering towards that moment. The challenge was making a movie that was going to be compelling for 90 minutes. To tell story that warranted attention. The short hit a sweet spot, but could I take a 90-page script that people would want to watch?
Shock: So, now you’ve got the horror bug, will you continue to stick around in the genre?
McCarthy: One of the things that always bugged me growing up was when someone debuted an interesting horror movie and then they would make a mid-level studio movie that had nothing to do with the genre or do a remake of a remake. The reason I got into this was because of someone like David Cronenberg. He does something like They Came from Within, I love that movie, and then he made Rabid and it’s a similar movie but he’s working through these similar ideas but independently. After Sundance this year, I went and wrote another movie, it’s another genre/indie movie and it’s something where I’m mining similar territory, not ghosts and stuff, but uncomfortable themes and I hope make it as good as it could be and we’ll be shooting that this fall.
