The Remains

This movie was so bad I felt the need to create a profile to review it.

The acting all around is terrible. The premise of the movie seems legit, but the actual script and delivery is way off.

It's hard to feel for this family when every one in it is an asshole. I hated the little girl just minutes into the movie and slowly grew to dislike the whole family. The older daughter is the typical angsty bitch, the son is obnoxious, and the younger daughter has resting bitch face and an attitude to match. The father is a stoic blob in each scene. If you can't like the characters, how can you like the movie? There is literally nothing in this movie that compels me to watch. I kind of felt like the subsequent haunting of this family is karma.

I couldn't finish this disaster. I normally love under rated B movies, but I couldn't find one redeeming thing about this one. Do yourself a favor, skip this one.

The synopsis for "The Remains" is what lured me in, well, and also because I have always enjoyed horror movies. But I wasn't familiar with this movie prior to stumbling upon it by sheer random luck.

And now having seen it, I can check it off the list, and say that I have seen it. It wasn't a particularly impressive movie, to be bluntly honest. The movie had a huge potential, but director Thomas Della Bella didn't utilize the potential. And the few scare moments there were to be found throughout the movie ended up as being nothing impressive, mere moments that you shrugged off with a casual shake of the head.

I will say that the atmosphere in the movie was good, and Thomas Della Bella was good at building up the suspense, but he just lacked the conviction to bring it to a fulfilling climax. As such, then the movie suffered terribly, and ended up being less than mediocre.

For a horror movie, then the only really frightening thing about the movie was the lack of scary moments and things that actually made you want to turn on the light. It was a dull, slow experience if you are looking for a good scare.

The acting in "The Remains" was adequate, and it was Todd Lowe who was carrying the movie with his performance.

Usually a good horror movie also has fairly good special effects. "The Remains" hardly used any special effects. So don't expect this to be a glorious Hollywood special effects galore.

The best thing about the movie was actually the ending. That took me by surprise, and I hadn't seen that coming. So that was an upside to an otherwise flaccid and monotone movie.

"The Remains" is the type of horror movie that you watch once, then you bag and tag it, put it on the shelf, most likely never to see the light of day again.

The 3.8 rating put me off, but after reading some of the reviews that said people were being too unkind about this movie I decided to give it a try. It starts in 1891 and instantly comes across as one of those old Italian horror movies that you would rather poke your eyes with a short stick than watch any more of, but after the first ten minutes the film comes back to the modern day and stays there.

The acting is okay. The story isn't particularly original, in fact it reminds me of the first season of American Horror Story just not so good, though it's still watchable (depending on your individual standards of course). It has all the usual goings on you'd expect from a horror film, and I guess it's on a similar quality level to The Visit, but I preferred this one; maybe because I was really looking forward to The Visit and got seriously let down, whilst I had serious doubts about this one and it turned out to be not so bad as I feared.

If you watch this with the 3.8 rating in mind then you might just get pleasantly surprised. It's by no means perfect, but it kept me watching until the end and that says something as I've rolled my eyes at plenty of films in the past and have switched them off, but I made it through this one with only a few heavy sighs and a stern look or two at God for letting the makers put some things into this movie's story-line. I've given this 5/10, but it may be around a (watchable) 4.5, really.

We don't agree with the harsh reviews of this movie. This is a haunted house flick, and having lived in a big old haunted Victorian, we thought they did a very realistic job of giving you the feeling of what that is like. It's not constant terror or horror, but lots of creepy, weird things happening that you are always trying to explain away (seeing figures, crashes in the attic, noises and voices). The seance was a good idea, as that was very popular during the Victorian times and they did good job of making it seem like it could be a hoax. Our frustration was with the thin story line about the haunting (what was going on with the original family, what happened to the girl, etc). You can make an educated guess, but revealing that story through the haunted chest in the attic would have been much more interesting and scary and would have led to a better ending which seemed rushed and hokey. We thought the characters were well rendered and believable, seemed like a real family, not saccharine where you root for them to get offed. This is one where it would be worth someone with better writing skills taking a shot at fleshing it out. Has the potential to be a really good scary movie. Seemed like the unscrupulous Realtor idea came from American Horror Story's first season. Now that was scary!

There was some over-acting from the medium at the start. Other than that, I was mainly glad to see that the children could act, and did a pretty good job of it. Child-actors who are not just skilled enough to create the suspension of disbelief, but also are interesting to watch must be either difficult to find, or too expensive for most film-makers' budgets.

Apart from that the movie built up, built up, and then... poof. It was over, without a creative surprise or unusual twist- anywhere. Summary: some creepy things happened, it got more tense with the creepy things building up, we are waiting for the big blowout which was more of a predictable letdown, and then it was over (except for me sitting there swearing about what a crappy movie I'd just watched).

I recommend the viewers out there skip this one. Read a book, wash your dog, rearrange the sweaters in your closet by colour. I wish someone had told me the same.