Most ultra low-budget straight to DVD can be considered "dark remains" and belong in the bowl.
This one's above the rim...
After their daughter is brutally murdered in thier home a grieving young couple escapes the city to find solace in the mountains. They try to stay busy but find their tattered relationship strained by their guilt over their daughters death.
Imagine putting your young daughter to bed and waking later that night, only to find her slashed to death by a knife in the very bed she slept. Young Emma's parents are distraught and suffering from terrible grief. They decide to move to a cabin in the mountains - a chance to heal and start anew. Julie (Cheri Christian), her mom, is becoming more and more depressed and withdrawn. Unfortunately for her, this mountaintop is riddled with the restless spirits of the dead, and they are drawn to her suffering like magnets.
This aint Lars von Trist's Antichrist - its a 2006 ghost story, done on a low budget scale by a new shot-in-the-dark director named Brian Avenet-Bradley. Dark Remains is one of those films that transcends what you would normally expect from its budget. It actually made me jump - like the first solid twitch of an epileptic seizure at one point - which I didn't think was possible to do anymore with a sub-mill' Amazonian.
The plot is dark. Nobody smiles in this film. From the onset you're shown two suicides, and then the murder of an innocent little girl as she laid sleeping in her bed. From there her parents are followed up to the mountains where they retreat to the seclusion of a cabin, where, understandably within the context of this plot, there are a lot more serious and sad faces. In an effort to regain a thirst for life through her photography, husband Allen (Greg Thompson) hands Julie a camera before her first walk in the forest. The trail just beyond the woods takes her to a local abandoned prison, where disgruntled ghosts pose for pictures, and unknowingly, notice and follow her home. Its nearly that spectral time of year to strike the mountain, as restless spirits have been doing for years circa the latter part of May.
Inside the house the hauntings begin, as the spirits of those who have died on this mountain begin to hang in the shower, lurk in the reflection of bathroom mirrors, peer through windows, and spidercrawl down the stairs like Regan in the 2000 Exorcist release. This backslider looks a lot like Cheryl from Evil Dead - and although these haunting techniques are not out of the ordinary, Avenet-Bradley shoots them in such a way that has them appearing in moments that you'd least expect. He uses several shots over and over, most of which pack no scare, and then when you're expecting nothing, BAM. Its rare and far between that you will see an amateur horror film with such an unusually keen sense of timing.
The blood and violence isn't the traumatic factor. There are slit wrists, implied gunshots to the head (you know, the barrel in the mouth and the splash against the wall), bludgeonings and stabbings - but nothing that will make genre fans especially squeamish. Its the ghosts, man. The one that appears when the friends are over popped me out of my seat, and I had to laugh because it got me. Chances are it will get you too.
Final analysis: Ghost stories are a dime a dozen. If you dug American Haunting, Fragile, and Gravedancers, this low budget standout has no problem hanging with the pack, as Dark Remains arms itself with a couple of genuine moments that'll make you jump like youre having a cadaveric spasm. The story gets slightly thinned out towards the end, and you will have to endure your share of low budget imperfection, but supporting actor Scott Hodges does a great job re-sparking attention playing the disturbed neighbor Jim Paynem, and overall, you get more than you would expect from something else of this quality.
Just watched it. I wouldn't consider it "above the rim". It did have some decent jump scares and creepy moments, but the entire fucking movie is nothing but generic jump scares. And I'm sorry, but it really takes very little talent or creativity to make jump scares. And I could probably forgive the crappy acting, except the damn female lead is the worst actor in the film. She has the emotional range of a shoe. And the plot... so goddamn confusing. Was it ever explained why the little girl was murdered? Or who did it?
Yes yes and yes. Youre right for the most part. Not above the rim of the toilet? I think this one clings to the edge - but its not in the bowl like some other low budget horror Ive seen (IE I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer, Horrors of War, etc) I must have seen too many really really bad movies. Credit to the jumps tho. I see a lot of films attempt jumps with cats jumping through windows and people walking into the room colliding with the main character on their way to the bathroom, that dont work... I thought Bradley had a keen sense of timing with his shots and showed some filmmaking promise in the way he shot repeated shots with no pre-expected surprises, and then would follow with a similar shot and nab the "lulled into safety" viewer. The actress was drab, but I felt it fit her emotionally wornout character. Otherwise, yeah, run of the mill, and the rating may be a star too high. But like I said - in the end - not bad.
I agree that it isn't BAD. There are some very well shot scenes and genuinely creepy jump scares and yes the director did show promise with those particular scenes, but in my opinion a lot of those scares were very generic and could have been accomplished by any other director. All he did for most of them was turn the music down low, have the character move around ever so slowly, then have them turn around or bend over for something, then come back up AND THERE'S A FUCKING GHOST WITH LOUD ASS FUCKING MUSIC!!!!!
I really enjoyed it for what it was. It showed promise. Not quite there but almost. It had atmosphere and was ceepy, and definitely had jump scares. The story meandered and kept throwing curve balls and red herrings, so it kept me guessing. Its 2 main flaws were the acting, and the cheap look.
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