THE MURDER PACT
US, 2015, 85 minutes, Colour.
Alexa Peña Vega, Beau Mirchoff, John Heard, Ethan Phillips, Sean Patrick Thomas, Bailey De Young, René Olstead, Michael J Willett.
Directed by Colin Theys.
Once upon a time there was Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, Rope. It was based on the Leopold-Loeb murder pact in Chicago in the 1920s. There have been various versions and variations on this plot including Compulsion and more historical explorations. This is a variation on the theme for television audiences, younger television audiences.
And, it states that it is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-tale Heart.
We are introduced to four ambitious preppies, Will, narcissistic, amoral, arrogant and very wealthy. There is his girlfriend (among many), Camille (Alexa Peña Vega, with memories of the Spy Kids films), ambitious to be a singer, rejected by uninterested judges in her audition. Rick is an athlete but abuses drugs. Poppy wants to be a dancer.
A situation arises where the young woman accosts Will on the roof of a building, seems to indicate that she might throw herself off, but Will, defies her, threateningly, and she does fall to her death. The proceedings are photographed from ground level by the dead woman’s roommate.
Will, with his power, puts pressure on the young woman (after we see them all sitting in lectures and discussions). She is invited to his house, a proposition made to buy her off, she refuses, the group concurred in her being killed and, surprisingly for the audience, Camille strangles her.
In the aftermath, Rick becomes more and more dependent on the drugs, fearful, rebuked by his sports trainers, collapsing while rowing, falling overboard and almost drowning, but hospitalised. Poppy is flighty, and is accosted at dancing classes. Will is smug, always smoothing things over, dominating Camille, having an interview with his dominating father (John Heard) whose portrait dominates the board room where a lot of the action, including the murder, happen.
At a masked dance, it seems that the photographer is present, with her camera.
And, then there is the revelation. Audiences may have difficulties with the character of Camille all the way through. She seemed too nice to offer to kill the photographer. And her behaviour throughout the story strains credibility – either the way the characters written, or the way that Alexa Peña Vega performs.
And, we are probably greatly relieved to find that the whole thing was a set up, an attack on Will, to bring on his downfall, and that the two women were in league.
And, so, a popular television entertainment with a variation on the murder pact.
