An intriguing opening and a surprising finale cannot quite save writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s The Pact from the tacky realms of ‘70s shlock horror.

We open on Nicole (Agnes Bruckner), a young mother who has returned to her childhood home following the death of her abusive mother. Alone in the house and squabbling with estranged sister Annie (Caity Lotz), Nicole is swallowed suddenly and mysteriously by a rather suspicious hallway closet.

Three days later Annie turns up in search of Nicole, accompanied by her cousin Liz and Nicole’s young daughter. One day in and someone else goes missing during the night. Beginning to grow terrified of the unknown presence in her mother’s house, Annie calls in help from a local policeman and a medium, whilst simultaneously looking into her mother’s past for clues.

From the off, The Pact is a film that impresses with the small things. Annie’s mother’s house is the perfect horror setting: every detail of the drab, seventies interior note perfect (and we all know seventies décor is the scariest). Indeed, comparisons to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining are almost unavoidable: a fixation upon dull, intricate wallpaper and long, slow tracking shots following the characters from room to room through the labyrinthine house.

Sadly, however, though the set-up is stylish and the opening sequence suitably restrained, The Pact ultimately buckles under the weight of a heavy-handed script, poor characterisation and jump moments that just don’t pack a punch (or actually, indeed, induce a jump).

There really is just something old-fashioned about The Pact. In an age where the psychological horror is in vogue, where the art of inducing a fright is all about suggestion in place of fanged, drooling monsters, McCarthy’s film blunders into its scare moments with the headlights on full beam. There aren’t so much bumps in the night as full on dead bodies, floating mid-air. The thing is, though: after three Paranormal Activity films in as many years, is seeing a character flung around violently by an invisible presence still frightening? Or is it a tired retread used as filler material?

Perhaps the most clichéd inclusion is that of Stevie (Haley Hudson), a young blind woman who can communicate with the dead. Complete with ghoulish white skin, long black hair and eye-makeup that would make Alice Cooper wince, Stevie is a character straight out of a teen horror from ten years ago, a plot device neither believable nor original, who floats in and out of the story when she is needed to move the action along.

The only real saving grace of McCarthy’s film is its relatively original twist ending, fumbled slightly by the weak script, but surprising enough to, in some ways, subvert the tropes of the genre.

Strangely, The Pact does actually attempt to move the horror genre forward into the 21st century with the use of smartphones and – yes – Google Maps, but ultimately its execution is just a ham-fisted rehashing of horror films that have gone before. Just like that dreadful wallpaper, McCarthy’s film feels severely outdated.

Released in UK cinemas on Friday 8th June 2012 by Entertainment One.

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