The Remains

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.

This is one the worst movies I have seen! The acting was terrible, I couldn't follow the plot (the antiques in the chest possessed those in the house?!) and during the last scene I couldn't make out if it was a dream until the older sister ran to him! Following this,I don't understand the role of the sister in the movie, all she does is smoke and make out with her boyfriend, only at the end does she have some sort of role and even then its pointless. How does anyone believe that the father can look up a name on his iPad after seeing a ghost, but that he wouldn't find out more information on the house? I don't understand the point in moving house after his wife died either, surely by taking the children away from their friends he would make things worse?? Don't waste your time watching this.

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.'

Watched this one very early in the morning (around 3:00-ish). Seems a family (father and three children) have just relocated to an old Victorian home formerly inhabited by a psychic whose spirit decided never to leave. She leaves some items (which she has apparently cursed) in the attic, and the children find them, thus awakening big, bad Bertha... This movie could have at least been passable if it weren't for the horrendous acting, poor editing, and (yet again) Swiss-cheese like script. The acting (or lack thereof) really had me shaking my head on more than one occasion. Not much effort was put into this movie, and it shows. Some scenes make absolutely no sense, and others seem to "appear" out of thin air. The actors who played the roles of the children must have been heavily drugged throughout the entire movie. They all had the acting range of a turnip. I hope they all have a back-up plan in place that includes something besides acting. Rated "R" for violence, language, and faux sex, "The Remains" should be left to rot.

Let me get the positive out of the way the seance beginning was not bad and the acting regarding the the medium was pretty good I was pretty impressed to be honest. When she spoke her voice was very pleasant to the ear and sounded sophisticated and worldly. Now with the good out of the way this movie sucked so badly it's just indescribable . Suffice it to say the kid actors are dull as dishwater and can't act for crap seriously. The movie was also boring and barely anything happened up until near the end of the movie. Suffice it to say even near the ending it was unbelievably bad and the oldest daughter was by far one of the worst actresses EVER. Just watch her give the worst performance ever near the end of the movie it is truly hilarious. The father was so so his acting was alright but he also overacted horribly in this movie . The ending I won't spoil but I'll just say this it's beyond hilarious and the SCARES in this movie are nonexistent,cheap,bad,and cliché. Highly NOT recommended .

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.

I wish I could give this a lower score. Completely lacking in originality. I feel like the creators of this movie opened The Big Book of Horror Movie Clichés, blindly pointed at a dozen or so pages and put them all together. The actors switched between overacting and looking so uninterested they were ready to walk off the set. The characters had absolutely no depth. The plot was typical - recent widower moves to a new neighborhood with his kids, the angsty rebellious teenage daughter and the two token younger kids. The house is beautiful and old and suspiciously cheap. Creepy things start happening, dad rationalizes. Generic evil entity takes control of the kids, kids beat dad to death in the spooky attic. Honestly, it was a relief when they all died in the end.

This movie was absolutely horrible! Hardly no jump-scares, boring dialogue, no depth in the story-line, you have absolutely no idea what is happening and why. You see a prologue that might have a good story-line base and then they do nothing with it. This movie is nothing compared to the movie Sinister. And I can really say that even The Ring was more interesting than this wannabe horror/thriller. The only good thing in this movie was the acting of Hannah Nordberg. If they paid a little more attention to her character they could've nailed it. I would not recommend this movie for a true horror-fanatic! You might just fall asleep in your sofa.

As I said,I know this films NOT worth rating it a 10,IMHO its more of a 7,yet definitely IS worth more than its current 3.8 average rating!I agree w/the review written by flitz35-638-627650 .I also think yes,this was likely a"Low Movie-Budget"type of film made.But it was used rather well to where if they had more to work with,would've made it possible to do more with it.Although even with BOTH the Actors & the Directing was done rather well and worked with what they had to use.Its kinda great to see good films,like this.that are as I would call a"B-/B-Minus"film where it didn't have a"Big-Budget,&Large Amounts of Advertising",yet was made using a decent story line in the amount of"run time"they were given to work with,that didn't come across as badly done w/it's quality too! I feel that there have been WAY Worse films made.You know the kind,where the actors hired were terrible,the video equipment used was obviously like it'd been either cheap,or inexperienced in using to where the shots used After editing,were still poor quality in many ways,that even"Made for TV"movies are done better!!We all know what it's like where you either are shutting the movie off after 10mins or so,OR,you're still watching & thinking"Maybe it'll get better soon?....Maybe now,it'll get better soon?!!....",but it never did as the credits start to roll....Just sayin,I think this is film worth trying to watch!

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!