The Pack (2015 film)

Plot

The film opens with a farmer hearing sounds and going out to his barn to investigate. A short time later his wife awakens from her easy chair by the fireplace to see his cigarette burning in the ashtray but he is not in the house. She goes to find him and hears a noise in the barn. As she enters the barn, she is killed by an unknown creature.

The next morning a neighboring farmer, Adam (Jack Campbell) finds several of his sheep dead after having their throats ripped out by a creature in the night. Meanwhile, his wife Carla (Anna Lise Phillips) is working in her veterinary clinic and hears the report of the dead farmers on the radio. She snaps off the radio and sends her son Henry (Hamish Phillips) out to play. The daughter Sophie (Katie Moore) is on the roof of the vet clinic laying in a lounger talking to her boyfriend on the phone. Carla sits at her desk and picks up the overdue $435 phone bill and angrily calls her daughter Sophie, who ignores her prompting her mother to yank the cord out of the wall. Sophie storms into the clinic and argues with her mother about farm life being solitary confinement and how they should move into the city, Carla counters this by suggesting she help out around the farm or get a job to help pay the phone bill. Henry comes in to let his mother know the man is back. Carla sends the kids in the house and calls for her husband over the walkie talkie.

The man turns out to be a bank manager and during the course of conversation it is revealed that their payments are in arrears and the farm is being foreclosed despite Carla's clinic being a new source of income. The snide and sarcastic bank manager tells them they can take the reduced amount of $200,000 for their barn or be forced out in 48 hours, but Adam refuses to sell as the only reason they are unprofitable is because the sheep keep being attacked and stating that they will never have to leave. The manager drives off and stops on the side of the road to urinate, but before he can return to his car he is promptly attacked by a pack of wild dogs that viciously tear his flesh and drag him down the hill.

Later that night the family is having a quiet evening. Sophie, who is in the shower, does not notice the shadow of a dog in the hall. When Carla and Henry go into the basement to change a fuse and she jump-scares him and teases him about being afraid. Adam goes outside to start the generator, when he realizes the family dog is missing. Calling for it, he walks to the edge of the forest and sees a few sets of yellow eyes staring back at him. He backs away from the forest as howling begins and large shadows start to pursue him, and rushes back into the house just ahead of the dogs who try to get into the house.

When he goes to get his rifle he notices that there are only two bullets and questions Carla about it who tells them that they have been going missing, although it was revealed earlier in the film to be Henry who is taking them, Carla calls the police and tells them there is a break-in while Adam trains his rifle on the door and shoots through it hitting the dog. He opens the door to see if it is dead and is attacked by it, and accidentally fires off his other round before dropping his rifle which skids out the door. Carla grabs a weapon and begins to beat the dog. A police officer arrives at the farmhouse to investigate and attempts to radio in to the police precinct. He gets out of his vehicle and as he approaches the house the pack viciously attacks him before dragging his body into the woods. Adam goes out to his pick-up truck and lets the family know it is safe to come out so they can escape in the truck. Just then a dog leaps through his window breaking the glass and biting him. He hits the gas and his trucks leaps forward plowing into the police car totaling both vehicles.

Carla hides Sophie and Henry in the pantry while an injured Adam goes out to the vet clinic to get additional ammo as Carla began storing the ammo in her office to stop them going missing. Adam gets into the clinic and finds there are only a few shells left. He hears a noise in the other room and creeps over to find a wild dog eating the animals in cages. Sophie begins calling him over the walkie talkie which alerts the dog to his presence and it attacks Adam who fights it off with the rifle. Meanwhile, another wild dog is trying to get into the closet and attack the kids but Carla stabs it with a kitchen knife and it runs off. They make an alternate plan to climb up onto the roof of the vet clinic. Adam goes first to snipe the dogs while the kids stealthily go through the interior dog run. Henry stops to collect some unused rifle shells he has hidden there. Carla has been making firebombs from flammable liquid she had in the house to throw at the dogs while the kids run across the last patch of lawn to the ladder. The leader of the pack sees Carla and runs toward her. As she runs back for the house she sees it closing in on her. She goes to the pick-up truck instead and climbs through the back window to get the tire iron and beat it. She fights it off long enough to get the truck door open. As it leaps through the window and she slams the door, closing the dog inside. She hides under the truck but is soon dragged out by the dog. As she sits at the side of the truck with the crowbar still in hand, the lead dog approaches her slowly snarling and showing his teeth. As he is about to attack, Adam appears on the roof of the truck, and shoots him in the head.

As day breaks the bloodied exhausted parents lead the children back to the house and the family dog comes bounding out of nowhere to join them. The camera pans above the house and through the forest before a close up of a dark cave entrance. A pair of yellow eyes like the ones earlier in the film, peer out from the darkness before the end credits begin.

Cast

Release

The Pack was released August 5, 2015 at the Fantasy International Film Festival in Germany and in Turkey on November 13, 2015. It received a limited release in the USA on February 5, 2016 as well as BluRay and DVD on the same date.

Reception

Critical reception for The Pack was predominantly negative and the movie currently holds a rating of 33% on RottenTomatoes, based on 6 reviews. LA Weekly panned the film, criticizing it for its storytelling and commenting that the movie's family was "remarkably stupid". The New York Times wrote a similar criticism of the family, while the LA Times felt that the movie relied overly much on "too many cheap jump-scares".

A reviewer for the New York Observer was more favorable, calling it "an effective thriller that sets out to scare the living daylights out of even the most skeptical viewer and delivers in spades." Mark Harris of About.com gave a mostly positive review, writing that "The attractiveness of the package and the steady pace at which it doles out the action more than make up for the character shortcomings in one of the best animals-run-amok horror movies in recent memory."