The Pact II

The story's a wash ... with a twist that won't surprise, and Patrick Fischler's role as the creepy FBI agent is too obvious a puzzle piece.

The directors, Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath, are fluent in the genre's staples ... And they draw decent work from their actors, who commit to the wispy, subtext-free material.

For all their skill with shambling corpses sneaking up behind beautiful women, the filmmakers can't figure out where to put the camera in those moments when characters are simply talking to each other.

"The Pact 2" simply stretches out rather than elaborating on its predecessor's already thin premise, creating holes that are poorly patched over with false scares and unconvincing character behavior.

An entirely underwhelming horror sequel...

It's unnecessary, and worse, glacial and uninspired, laboring to come up with a few viable reasons to plunge back into this limited world and manipulate it into a burgeoning franchise.

There's a worthy sequel to a better-than-average horror film in here somewhere, but it's buried underneath a wild goose chase that ultimately goes nowhere.

The Pact II plays like a more convoluted version of The Pact - and since I don't care for Nicholas McCarthy's original, I think you can guess how I feel about Hallam and Horvath's sequel.