Dark Remains

Well, this film is a difficult one really. To be straight with you, this film doesn't contain much of a riveting story, nore does it make u 'want' to know how it'll end...but I'll tell you something now...never have I been as tense and jumped up before in my life! This film sure does deliver the jumps and thrills! To be fair, I did watch it at almost midnight so I was kinda sleepy anyway, so maybe that explains why I was jumpy...or maybe it's because this film does deliver in that aspect! It's basically about a couple who lose their child in a tragic event. They decide to move away and rent a cabin looking thing in the mountains...all looks peaceful and calm until they have their first visitors (i think it's it's the sister of the main character, and she brings along her husband)...during the night, the husband hears noises...checks it out, and thats when things start to go really really wrong...they don't stay for another day and tell the couple they should leave asap as something isn't right...to cut a long story short...eventually they find out what has happened in that house in the past few years and decide it needs to be taken care of.

It's not a Hollywood blockbuster, nore does it have a huge budget, but please don't let that put you off. It's creepy, tense and very very jumpy! Just give it a try :)

What's Good About It: Some inventive and genuinely creepy little effects that will get under the skin of even the most seasoned horror fan. Doesn't rely on the hackneyed soundtrack stabs for its "gotcha" moments. Even if you've seen everything, there's still a few things in this film that will make your jaw drop.

What Could Have Been Better About It: The acting was, at times, flat and unconvincing. It had a "shot-on-video" quality in some places (though,it mostly achieved the atmosphere it was striving for), and the camera work is full of needless close-ups of meaningless actions. Though the effects are genuinely creepy, I think they may have gone to the well a few too many times with some of them. The ending seemed rushed, and glossed over what could have been more impactful moments. The viewer is left to figure out a lot of things for themselves, not as a challenge by the filmmakers, but because they just missed it.

Still, a good little indie horror film that is easily several steps above the average. Well worth the rental.

I had the luck to watch this wonderful oldskool scary-flick on the weekend-of-fear.com in Erlangen this summer. It was, like the headline already said, very dark. More then half of the movie plays in the dark. Less music - more sound- and lots of "jump"-effects. Excellent camera and a descent story about a mountain full of mysteries.

The plot is simple. The daughter of a married couple, Julie and Allen, gets murdered in the beginning by a killer in her own bed in a locked house. Strange - no murder can be found... A year later, the couple tries to escape their past and to begin a new life in a lonely mountain cabin away from the big city. But, like always, they live in a spook-house and ghosts soon appear. Julie blames herself for the death of her daughter and something evil lurks in the woods... The movie slowly begins to walk into the "poltergeist" direction just to get the "ring" turn...

Like I earlier said, the movie is dark and you can really get scared, when Julie walks straight through the woods into an abandon prison in the middle of the night just equipped with the flashlight of her camera.

If you a bored of major movies and enjoyed the recent screenplay "Silent Hill" or the haunted house tales, you we like this small independent production. The effects are placed very nicely. Not too gory and the acting is nice. Hands up for this fresh scary-movie. A good popcorn rent.

A grieving couple move to a remote house after the death of their daughter, but they find a deadly spirit in their new home, and the locals aren't helpful ...

The opening is grim, then the daughter dies and it's not clear if it was suicide. She's maybe 7 years old, and they discover her in bed with her wrists all bloody. Ugh. Anyway, I was reading this as a metaphor for the horrible inevitability of suicide, but it got more literal and ended up fairly spooky.

The direction/editing is plain, with a soundtrack of plinky-piano/twangly-harp, just right for TV melodrama. Lots of poor attempts at jump-scares, especially the back-fitting of a figure that wasn't there the last time you looked, the figure moving across the background. The tumbling down the stairs one worked, both times.

Greatest weakness is the script, because it doesn't combine things into each scene, and there are too many characters for such an intimate story. Plus the dialogue is weak, leaving lots of meaning on the table.

Overall, a cheesy production, but the theme is strong and sort of breaks through in the end.

Granted, I'm not the connoisseur d'horror my partner is, but a well put together, clever flick is worth the time. My quibbles, in brief:

• Dialog often weak and at times unbelievable coming from the given character.

• Unconvincing acting.

• Storyline never really caught fire.

The writers plucked choice bits from half a dozen mainstream films, tossed into a kettle, simmered not nearly enough and tried feeding us poor saps the resulting mess, al'dente.

Long and short, while not absolutely terrible, it was definitely not worthy of absorbing one of my NetFlix rentals.