The Remains

The first thing you notice is the film looks cheap, the special effects are shoddy, some of the costumes look like people dressed up for Halloween, and it's a story that's been done to death. Despite the negatives it's watchable enough.

Todd Lowe is rather good as the central character, the tormented father, not unlike a young Kenneth Brannagh.

Some decent scares, although just as the film starts to get into its groove, it comes to an end.

I wouldn't watch it again, but it was a decent watch.

After seeing the rating before the movie I was a little hesitant on even starting it. A lot of negative ratings on here but I gotta say the movie wasn't that bad, it started off strong and caught my interest. Some down falls would be some cheesy acting and predictable scenes. The little daughter made an impression on me I feel like she was the best actress of the movie and was convincing in a lot of her scenes, I would say she has a promising career ahead of her especially in horror films.

All in all if your a horror fan the movie is worth a watch, although if you find it to be that bad. Don't regret turning it off you wont miss anything special..

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!

A family moves house after the death of the mother, only to find themselves trapped by the history of their new home as an evil spirit takes over ...

Standard haunted house tale, so it needs a bit of spice and cleverness to impress. The outstanding feature is the photography, with plenty of angles and movement and depth and detail. But they might regret the decision to light almost the entire movie brightly - shadows often obscure a horror tale, but this one needed more.

The acting was OK, especially the little girl, although even she struggled with some lifeless dialogue. And I think that's where the problem is - the writing and direction. The origin story didn't play through, and we weren't led to the source of the evil. Some crucial scenes were handled badly and turned out underwhelming. Plus there were some spots where dialogue was repeated to no extra effect, and one of the female characters could have been folded into another without harming the story.

The music was pretty good, but laid on too thick.

So it's a first time feature for the director/writer. A bit sloppy, and lacking conviction. But it definitely doesn't deserve one star ratings.

ps. The cinematographer has a similar movie in production, so that could be interesting.

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.