After having found their daughter Emma murdered, Julie and Allen Pyke rent an isolated cabin in the mountains in Kingspike to try and get away from the bad memories that they both carry. Former photographer Julie is deeply depressed and to make her feel better, Allen suggest to his wife that she should go out and start taking pictures again. She follows his advise and finds an abandoned prison nearby where she starts taking photos, but when developing those same photos, she sees that they have murder victims on them - something that only she can see as well. Meanwhile, Allen finds out that the people who owned the cabin before they moved in apparently killed themselves and as he digs deeper, he find out more and more about the mysterious place and what really happened there long ago.
As far as I know, Dark Remains was Brian Avenet-Bradley's third feature film and since I liked his previous feature that was Ghost of the Needle, I was pretty excited to check this one out. It's easy to tell that the director has improved a lot this time around; everything looks much more slick, the scares are more effective and Dark Remains oozes of being more professional than his previous film, even though that one was very good indeed. Best thing about this film though was how creepy it tended to get every here and there and reminded me of that similar feel that some Asian horrors have proved to cause.
If you didn't know it, we're dealing with an indie feature here, but don't let that turn you off one bit because Dark Remains neither look nor feels like your typical indie film. I have no idea what kind of budget Avenet-Bradley had when putting this together, but the film looked way better than your standard type of indie film and not for a second did I think of it as a low-budget feature; it was professionally shot, the acting was above average (for most parts that is) and the film delivered some really creepy angles that created one helluva great dreaful atmosphere.
I noticed how the film had certain sounds or music to it every time a scare was about to hit and I guess that worked both for it and a bit against it as a whole. Sure, it delivered a certain feel of dread, but at the same time made you aware of when to put the coffee cup down in order not to spill if you know what I mean. While all the scares might not have been effective, let me just say that there were plenty of those that really were and you got to witness them every once in a while all the way through, something that helped the film to never feel like it slowed down too much. To be honest, this is what I would sometimes like to see Asian films going towards, since a lot of the time, they have a tendency to just be to dull during the first hour to later fire off all the creepy stuff during the last 20 minutes or so. With Dark Remains, you got it all, all the time and that is a good spooky story that was told in a way that always made it easy to keep an interest up and add to that, great scares every now and then to keep the high level of horror up as well. I'm not saying that it was a fast-paced movie, but rather that the pacing was simply just very good.
It all sounds great doesn't it? Well, I must admit that the film was pretty darn great, but like most films, it also had things that tended to be not so good. Although, they are few and I guess some of it depends on what kind of taste you have. The leads in the movie Cheri Christian and Greg Thompson delivered fine performances and I must say that Greg Thompson who played Allen was extremely likable. While the other characters were never bad, most of them still didn't come close to manage to pull off what the two leads did, and that sometimes felt like it did drag the movie down a little bit. It's no major complaint though and it's definitely not reason enough not to see this movie, in fact, in the end it doesn't matter. The music in the film was also a factor that added some really good feel to the overall experience and I believe that Brian Avenet-Bradley might become a big name in the horror genre in the future.
If you wanna see a genuinely creepy ghost movie, Dark Remains would be an excellent choise. The film has a lot going for it and best thing was that it had scares that did actually work, something that is soooooo hard to find these days. Highly recommended!
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Brian Avenet-Bradley
WRITING CREDITS: Brian Avenet-Bradley
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Cheri Christian, Greg Thompson, Rachel Jordan
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 91 min
RATING: 9/10
Dark Remains Website/IMDB Click here
Dark Remains Trailer Click here
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