Directorial Debris (Dark Remains (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Dark Remains (DVD)
Date:	08/02/09 (305 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very hard to think of any

Disadvantages: Plot, cast, script, idea, budget and so on

A review of the direct-to-DVD release from 2007.

When tragedy strikes Allen and Julie Pyke, they pack up their things and move to a log cabin, deep in the American countryside to rest and recuperate. Allen, a technical writer by trade, does his best to try and raise his wife's spirits and encourages her to resume her creative photography to try and distract her. Reluctantly, Julie agrees to start taking some photos and ventures off into the woods to find something worth photographing. Not far from the cabin, Julie stumbles across a decrepit, disused prison. Inside, she finds a wealth of picture opportunities, but when she develops the photographs, she starts to see things that weren't there when she first took the picture. It soon becomes clear that the couple's new woodland home is not quite the safe haven they hoped it would be......

Dark Remains is one of those films that you know is going to be rubbish within minutes of pressing play. It's possibly the fact that the soundtrack sounds unbelievably cheap, as though the whole film has been recorded on somebody's camcorder. It could be the stunted, wooden performances of the two initial characters that are shown killing themselves, ironically as if to suggest it was all too much for them. Alternatively, it might be the terribly over-the-top use of music that bombards the audience with its "dah, dah, DAH!" approach to accompanying shocks. Or maybe, it's just the combination of all three. In either case, the running time thereafter is simply an exercise in proving that your initial suspicions were correct and, trust me, they were.

Dark Remains is a very low-budget affair. In the opening scenes, when we see Julie and Allen in their original home, it's clear that they've rented a property and have minimal budget to actually put anything in it to make it look like an authentic family home (their daughter's bedroom seems to consist of a mattress on the floor). The location chosen for their mountainside retreat is more suitable but the threadbare funding is still apparent. Filming and lighting is as basic as it can be, without a shred of flair or innovation and attention shifts, therefore, to the storyline and characterisation. This is not a good thing.

The storyline is one of those pointless, contrived, supposedly spooky tales that is entirely predictable and completely uninteresting. The fundamental idea (that a cabin in the woods is the site of an unfeasibly high number of suicides) simply doesn't hold any water particularly given that the narrative is peppered with unavoidably comical appearances from previous tenants in various states of decomposition. These moments are supposed to be chilling, but instead they end up turning the whole production into a bit of a farce. Said ghouls crop up in the most predictable of places (you know, behind the shower curtain, hanging from a noose on the porch, that sort of thing) and it's all totally excessive. With a modicum of make-up, the actors playing the ghouls try just a little too hard to be ghoulish.

Needless to say, the log cabin is surrounded by a freak show of eccentric locals. The landlord clearly knows more than he's letting (clue - he's VERY friendly). The local sheriff is one of those community-focused individuals who just drop in for the sake of it (yeah, right) and (as usual) the local librarian seems to know everything about anything that ever happened, accompanying it with a steely stare. More frustratingly, as both Julie and Allen realise that there's something not quite right about the house, they seem intent on staying put until the very last minute when, of course, it's all a bit too late. The plot eventually pans out into a combination of supernatural and more normal elements but the writer struggles to work well with the combination of the two, resulting in large plot holes and inexplicable moments of stupidity that irritate the audience intently. Even after the eventual climax, the film just peters out as though the writer (Brian Avenet-Bradley, also the director) didn't really know what to do.

All this means that the film's last hope remains with its cast members, but sadly, there's nothing worth noting there either. Julie (Cheri Christian) is generally either hysterical or wooden and clearly destined for a career in television only. Husband Allen (Greg Thompson) fares no better, and it's hard to decide whether his frustration is scripted or directed at the script. There's a token redneck, with Scott Hodges doing it all well over-the-top (he's clearly been watching The Simpsons too much) and the landlord (Patrick Keenan) couldn't act for toffee, and it's no surprise, therefore, that he had a fifteen-year break between this movie and his previous effort. Sheriff Hodges (Jeff Evans) is moderately likeable and obviously doomed, but that's more a reflection of the genre than anything specific to this film.

At around an hour and a half, Dark Remains is mercifully quite short. The 18-certificate is a reflection of one or two moments of fairly gory violence, amounting to some writs slashing and child slaughter, but the overall tone of Dark Remains is frustratingly tame. Most of the violence is also terribly unrealistic; a deep, vertical wrist slash seems to yield hardly any blood and someone takes a good few knife stabs to the stomach with little effect.

It's safe to say, therefore, that Dark Remains is pretty dreadful stuff. The low budget didn't necessarily have to equal low standards, but it really only remains to be said that this is one to avoid like the plague.

Not recommended

Summary: Tragedy brings a young couple to a mountainside cabin where strange things start to happen