In short: The Pact (2018)

Original title: El pacto

Clara (Mireia Oriol), the daughter of divorced lawyer Mónica (Belén Rueda) and policeman Álex (Darío Grandinetti), is found in a diabetic coma after she has disappeared for some hours. It turns out on of Clara’s classmates locked her in his car in a deserted place with the aim of killing her. The kid couldn’t quite go through with it, though, so he dropped her off where she would be found before she was truly dead. Apparently, he believes he has made some kind of supernatural pact exchanging Clara’s life for that of his mother who is very much in the process of dying. He does die under mysterious circumstances himself soon enough, and his mother did indeed come back to life after a fall she really couldn’t have survived, so there might be a point to his tale.

Mónica is willing to believe it, at least, once it becomes clear her daughter might never wake up from her coma. She finds out how and where the kid made the pact rather easily, and soon her daughter’s hale and hearty again, and Mónice really rather needs to find someone to kill, or face the consequences.

Unfortunately, while David Victori’s El Pacto has a fine set-up for all kinds of interesting thoughts about guilt, responsibility and love causing horrible deeds, it doesn’t really do terribly much with these things. Given the set-up, there’s a surprising amount of horror by numbers scenes, particularly in the film’s second half, and a script (by Victori and Jordi Vallejo) that becomes increasingly contrived, always looking for the next “surprising” plot development when it would have been better to actually explore the situation it has set up in more depth. It also doesn’t help that this is another one of those films that first set up clear rules for its supernatural shenanigans only to then break them in nonsensical ways that never feel like the film is expanding on what it had presented to this point but rather lazily seeking the easiest way to the next plot twist.

It’s too bad, really, for the actors would certainly have been able to do more, and Victori’s direction is slick and competent enough I can’t help but believe he’d have been able to make a film actually exploring the dark things it sets ups, and still make it exciting on a visceral level.


As it stands, this is perfectly watchable, and completely forgettable.