The Remains

The movie starts out interesting and it does pull you in. But as far as jumps and hair-raising...eh. It's the usual family finds a house way cheaper than it should be...(Haunted house red flag...) and moves in. Strange things begin to happen and they try to explain it away when anyone else...me included...would be sent screaming into the streets, clothed or not. The acting is not terrible and the jumps in the film keeps you hanging on hoping for that happy ending you know will never happen. This IS a horror movie, people. It's very rare. All in all not a complete waste of time and me and my wife were actually surprised by the 3.7 rating it received on IMDb. Didn't think it was quite that bad, but the people have spoken. Until the next bad movie.

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.

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!

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.

So listen, the set design and style works and the basic premise is nothing special but it could work. The problem is there are many scenes that literally feel like the first take, as if actors are holding their script in their hands reading their lines out loud for the first time. It's rather painful at times and either they were short on time and could only do a couple takes, or the director needed a lot more experience directing actors. Some of the actors are in other projects and have performed much better so this really does fall onto director's responsibility. I don't recommend this movie.