The Remains (2016)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This is a very generic, cliche horror movie. Something bad happens in a house. Many years later, a family who is grief stricken and dealing with a tragedy comes across the house on the market. It's a steal of a deal so they move in; shortly after moving in, the family begins to experience paranormal occurrences.The acting leaves a lot to be desired and the storyline feels like every haunted house themed horror movie from the last few decades. The scares are primarily jump scares which come across as predictable and stale. Not the worst movie ever but definitely not great.

There was really no backstory to the haunting. At the beginning of the movie we see a seance gone wrong, but it flimsily just makes it that the medium dies and is now the evil spirit killing everyone in the seance. No backstory on the spirit itself, just a quick how do you do and off to the sad family with bratty kids and clueless father. Then we get a mediocre build up that just kind of stumbles along and an ending that seemed like it was done with the motivation that 'well, the movie has to end so let's do this.'

Although this is a common theme in horror movies, I've seen it done very well many times. Unfortunately this was not one of them. It started out with potential, the kids bickering in the backseat amused me, especially the eye rolls. But this type of cheesy, over the top acting continued throughout the whole movie. If this had been a horror-comedy that would have been fine, but it was not.The other downfall to this film was how quickly we see the evil spirits. There was no suspenseful lead up. Just, Boom!, here you go. I can even overlook (at first) that the dad didn't think anything was up with a giant house, in decent condition, being sold so cheaply. After the first person (not the third) mentioned something about being surprised the house ever sold, I would have been jumping on Google. In Dad's defense he did keep getting overtaken by a spirit, and forgetting what he as doing, but to use this as the reason for everything just didn't work for me. It was really lazy writing. And as far as the realtor goes we never get an answer as to why she was bringing more people to this house, besides for the commission. Was she a minion of the evil spirit, was it part of her family and she felt like she needed to bring sacrifices?? Guess we'll never know. The only reason I'm giving this movie two stars, instead of one, is because there was some decent special effects. If you really enjoy evil house stories, you may want to give this one a watch, otherwise, I would say to skip it.

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.