They Remain

You know a movie is not really worth it when the top reviewer has to sell you a 10/10 by justifying it with "if you don't like really good slow creeping thriller horrors that really make you think about the plot, and instead like badly written half-scary slam-bam horrors, then you won't like this movie". Basically ANYTIME a review tells you that you won't like this movie if (insert generic comparison to good movie here) or you won't like this movie if you like movies that (insert generic comparison to horrible movie here) then you just skip over that review. THAT is not a reason to like a movie. THAT is a perfect example of paid reviews or reviews by people who are inflating the score.

The good thing here is that the movie was so bad that even the score can't be inflated past a 5/10. It truly is not worth more than that. This movie does not explain any of the back story or plot, whether subtly or through exposition. The viewer is just supposed to pay attention so much that they read the minds of the writer and director. (BTW, I have seen reviews that label the writer as some sort of MASTER horror author, yet the guy hasn't sold more than 100 copies of any of his books, and none of them are rated higher than 4/5. That means that the few people who have read them still didn't think they were MASTERFUL pieces, yet now we have movie reviewers that think his books are PERFECT and that this movie is a 10/10??? Please!)

How is anyone supposed to know that these two people have a romantic history with each other? It requires reading an explanation of the movie just to know that, because based on their acting and dialogue they are just two coworkers that have been assigned a job who constantly bicker back and forth with each other. The girl is always frowning, as if she has a lemon in her mouth, and speaks without any inflection. ZERO inflection. She sounds like a robot. And the guy is always staring at things as if he is protesting the concept of blinking. These people have no emotion, no character development, NO SOUL!

Are these people investigating a cult? Or are they the last people on the planet investigating genocide? Oh, now she discovered some wasps... are they biologists looking to see if an unknown chemical killed off all of the life? Oh wait, there is a hole in the ground with a crazy fossil of an unknown species... maybe there is a monster? Are they being stalked by hands? Is it a poltergeist that can fiddle with the cameras? Does someone live by with a pet dog? I mean, CMON... pick a direction and stick with it!! Its as if the director tried everything he could to make his own story scary (this is the guy who wrote Europa Report --- good movie!). Maybe he wrote this dribble years before.

At least the last 10 minutes or so of the movie is decent. It ends on a good note, but if you spend just a few seconds thinking about it you will realize that it is the type of ending that it just written into a story because there is nowhere else to go with it. It makes no sense and there is no explanation for anything. So many questions left unanswered, but not deeply profound questions.... just annoying distractions that leave you saying "huh? this sucks".

But the bottom line here is... DO NOT TRUST ANYONE WHO GAVE THIS A 7/10, 8/10, 9/10, or 10/10...... because what they are saying is that they think this movie equates with some of the BEST MOVIES EVER MADE. (Impossible). Even (biased) Rotten Tomatoes tried to make this movie stand out with their 60% positive reviews, but you will notice that the audience reviews gave it a score that more closely resembles the score on IMDB --- 30%. And the IMDB score has to wrestle with all of these fake 8/10, 9/10, and 10/10 ratings. Imagine what this movie would be rated if you got rid of all of the fake paid reviews???? Probably a 2/10 or 3/10.

I give it 3/10 because this movie sucks. Alternate recommendation: HALLOWEEN 3: THE ONE WITHOUT MICHAEL MYERS

Ponderous, pretentious and emotionally stunted, those are my lasting impressions of They Remain.

Whilst the back story holds together well enough, any promise this film might have had is wasted. This is a ponderously slow burn thriller that's laboriously wanders from vague pretentious symbolic abstraction to abstraction, offering the viewer a visual feast but a contextual famine.

The result is an aimless affair where the key characters are so caught up in the visual symbolism and inexplicable, moody, mono-tonal narrative, that any emotional range, that might have helped build the tension this thriller desperately needs, is lost.

In conclusion, a dissatisfying film, that wants to go somewhere but forgot to ask for directions. 4/10 from me.

I read a review somewhere online that called They Remain sort of like Annihilation but with a cult. I guess that's sort of true. The basic plot is that two scientists have been sent into a forest wilderness to investigate strange animal behavior. Their area of interest also happens to be where a large cult had recently conducted its rituals (including torture and murder). But as the scientists spend more time in isolation, they become more paranoid of each other and of their surroundings. Is it something in the air? For me, this movie was pretty inscrutable - and unenjoyable - although at the very end we do get the slightest bit of closure or satisfaction. But until that time, let's just say it's a bumpy and not always interesting road they travel. We see everything through the eyes of only one of the scientists; perhaps dualling perspectives would have helped. I kept wondering when something was going to happen that made some sense, but the movie kept tantalizing me, showing me strange occurrences without any sense of context or import. In addition, there are multiple scenes of hallucinations or dreams, but it's not easy to distinguish them from the "real" scenes. The acting isn't bad, and the photography is beautiful, but the meaning was lost on me.

This seems to be an attempt to create intellectual horror, or intellectual dread. There are atmospheric moments, but since the mishmash of story and backstory are ultimately incomprehensible, not in an artistic and interesting way but in the manner of incoherence, the movie is much ado about nothing. If you want an interesting and strangely suspenseful movie which moves along at a similarly deliberate pace, try Phase 4, and excellent understated science-fiction drama/eco-horror. They Remain seems to be trying to achieve something similar, but fails in ho-hum fashion.

Two scientists who share a romantic history are tasked with investigating unnatural animal behavior on the site of a Manson Family-style cult's compound.

Laird Barron is the author of several books, including "The Croning", "The Imago Sequence", "Occultation", "The Light Is the Darkness", and "The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All". Despite this impressive list of titles, "They Remain" is the first film to be adapted from Barron's work.

In horror, there is something known as the "slow burn", a film that relies more on building a sense of tension and tone rather than a fast-paced scary, in-your-face gorefest. "They Remain" is definitely going for the slow burn method, though some might doubt whether it has been achieved. The film can fairly be described as "minimalist", and as such viewers may find there is very little actually burning. Does the thin plot pay off in the end?

Because of its screening at a Lovecraft film festival, it seems appropriate to discuss any themes that might be Lovecraftian. And indeed, the idea of there being a connection between geography and madness is very much a Lovecraft-inspired topic. In fact, this may be the most interesting part of the film: is the cult a one-off, or is there something otherworldly that causes such behavior time and time again? And if the latter, what is the cause? Lovecraft dabbled with the ideas of non-Euclidean geometry affecting areas (architecture) and radioactive meteors altering moods. But what does "They Remain" offer?

For the horror fans, there will likely be some disappointment with the average makeup effects, particularly the burn wounds in one scene. In other technical areas, the film excels. The framing, cinematography, score and so on are all top-notch. The acting is excellent, and the two leads successfully take a thin plot and carry the run time's weight.

"They Remain" debuted October 7 at the H. P Lovecraft Film Festival. It should be reaching a wider audience in the near future, presumably by late Fall 2017 via Paladin Films.