"The Pact," a Horror Movie Feature Debut by Nicholas McCarthy A low-key, at times low-energy haunted house flick, "The Pact" is the sort of exploitation cheapie that trades on the usual creaking floorboards, dark closets, modest scares, lethal weapons, pretty women and pretty dead women - which for certain horror enthusiasts makes it inherently worth a look. Its premise is as familiar as its storybook particulars, and the whole thing skews so simple it can be summed up in one hyperventilated line, something like, "You can't go home again ... alive!" Back in the grind-house day, Roger Corman would have hired its director, Nicholas McCarthy, in a heartbeat. More specifically, a motorcycle-riding waif, Annie (Caity Lotz, a sympathetic presence), peels off her black leather jacket and confronts the creepy stuff that happened once upon a time. She's returned to her childhood home of horrors after her sister, Nicole (Agnes Bruckner), has stopped returning calls. A single mother with a shady past and a cross inked on her arm, Nicole had gone back to the same house after their mother died. Annie thinks Nicole, a former druggie, has simply bailed. Then a shut closet door opens, seemingly unaided, and a sense of disquiet enters, as does the hope that Mr. McCarthy, making his feature debut, has a grasp on his material. He does and he doesn't, as a solid scene is followed by a shakier one that in turn is answered by one that sends a nice shiver up your spine. Part of the problem is inexperience; he can't (yet) direct his way around weak performers. And there are moments when Mr. McCarthy becomes bogged down with exposition and character background that are less interesting than the fun he has by opening and closing doors, cranking the music up and down and punctuating scenes with abrupt edits. There's some self-conscious playfulness here, though it's unclear whether all the laughs are intentional, as when a wigged-out Nicole asks why a cop, Creek (Casper Van Dien of "Starship Troopers" cult fame), doesn't believe her supernatural-sounding explanation for the weird doings. Mr. McCarthy adapted the movie from his 2011 short of the same title, and sometimes it feels, particularly in the baggy middle, as if he didn't have enough material for an extended-play version. The opening, though, with Nicole alone in the house, does work, and there's a nice and uneasy passage when, as she's trying to catch a Wi-Fi signal while on Skype, she walks around, holding her laptop in front of her, the camera and an unseen wicked something or someone, you intuit, trailing her. These gliding camera movements - partly courtesy of the director of photography, Bridger Nielson, and the Steadicam operator, Liam Clark - suggest elevated directorial ambition, even as the grayish, thin-looking digital gives the movie a fittingly low-rent, straight-to-cable visual quality. When Annie starts poking about the house, scrutinizing old photographs, tracking down clues and talking to various others (including a spooky medium played with eyeball-rolling showmanship by Haley Hudson), it can seem as if Mr. McCarthy had lost his thread. Is this a haunted house tale, a mommy-dearest mystery or a psycho puzzler, and does it matter? In the end, like a lot of genre movies, this one pulls from different inspirations, and so weighs in, by turns, as overly predictable and satisfyingly recognizable (part of genre cinema's one-two punch). More important, as Annie moves toward the big reveal, Mr. McCarthy throws in enough shivery details - eerie phone messages, elliptically passing shadows and a mysterious figure slithering like a snake through a tiny entranceway - to keep you agreeably jumpy. The Pact Written and directed by Nicholas McCarthy; director of photography, Bridger Nielson; edited by Adriaan Van Zyl; music by Ronen Landa; production design by Walter Barnett; costumes by Azalia Snail; produced by Ross Dinerstein; released by IFC Midnight. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. WITH: Caity Lotz (Annie), Casper Van Dien (Creek), Agnes Bruckner (Nicole) and Haley Hudson (Stevie).