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.

Saw 'The Remains' being fond of horror/thriller regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre) and being intrigued somewhat by the idea. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing.

Unfortunately, despite not reading any reviews purposefully before watching, am going to have to agree with all the reviewers who hated 'The Remains'. A film that started off promisingly, but ran out of steam very quickly and rapidly got worse by a second half that makes one not want to keep watching. Never judge a film without seeing the whole thing and wanted to give 'The Remains', so gave it a fair chance.

As said, 'The Ramains' started off pretty promising.

The location is also suitably spooky.

However, so much brings 'The Remains' down. Excepting Todd Lowe, who is okay, the acting is both over-histrionic or disinterested and the direction is so phoned in and pedestrian, one gets the sense that the director showed no interest in the film at all. Too much of the soundtrack is intrusive and annoying, made worse by the excessive and obvious sound effects that just cheapens the mood. The film looks drab generally and like it was made in haste.

Where 'The Remains' most underwhelms is the writing and story. The writing is incredibly lazy, it's awkward in dialogue, very confused as a result of not tying things up or going into full detail and doesn't feel complete. The story suffers from a very limp pace, apparent early on and gets slower and slower until an interminably dragged out second half. It further suffers from feeling too much like a short film stretched out with a lot of useless padding. The stereotypical characters are both bland and annoying and the inconsistent and illogical motivations bring them down further.

For a film billed as a horror, there is very little interesting and nothing remotely scary which makes a waste of such a spooky-looking location. They are too few and are far too predictable, anaemic and weakly timed to make impact, with the dull pacing and obvious sound effects cheapening them significantly. 'The Remains' doesn't engage let alone thrill, the start intrigued by feels wasted by how quickly everything runs out of steam. The ending was surprising somewhat but still doesn't leave much impact because it feels abrupt and one has lost engagement with the film long before it ends.

In summary, very poor on the whole. 2/10 Bethany Cox

So, big spoilers here because I'll explain the movie.

1890, a seance is done because a couples daughter is missing. Daughter is dead, bc the medium connects with her. Then the medium is suddenly taken over and kills everyone in the room.

FFW to now, a typical story of mom dying and idiot dad wants to start over with bratty kids in an old home whilst doing no research ahead of time about the home. No one has lived in this house for 120 yrs and it's super cheap and super nice. Sure why not!

So then, the kids start getting possessed bc theres a random chest of old valuables in the house.

Then the dead daughter from the 1890s appears, warns dad that "she" is coming. Medium pops up, makes the kids kill the dad, oldest daughter burns the chest, medium spirit kills the 3 kids.

Then a new family moves in. That's it. No scares. No storyline whatsoever. No back story. No clue as to who the dead girl is or why shes even there. No clue as to what took over the medium and why shes even evil. Then theres this neighbor with a dad who had a stroke in the house, so no development with that either.

None of it made any sense whatsoever and as someone who LOVES bad movies, I just hated this bad movie. Only watched it bc I was a huge True Blood fan.

The end.