Remains

source: Remains

Cliché zombie movie setup. Something goes wrong unleashing the zombie plague on humanity with only a few survivors. The plot for this movie was not original, but it had a lot of potential. The acting was poor especially at times where it was suppose to make the audience feel emotion. There was no character development at all, and there were moments were the CGI was awful. I'm a lover of zombie movies, so I was able to bear with it and hope it would get better. It did not. It felt like a made for TV movie, and I would have to compare it to a Syfy movie. Transition from scene to scene for the most part did not flow smoothly. What really put the nail in the coffin were the same mistakes that most horror films make. 1) Unwarranted sex (or almost sex). 2) One of the main characters does something that makes no sense. At one point one of the characters decides to leave their gun on the bed and check out another room. To no one's surprise they is attacked by a zombie. 3) The o'so overused ending where they make it out, but at the very end before the credits there is a little something to let you know that it isn't over yet. It got a 4 from me, because it helped that it was a zombie movie and it had some entertaining moments.If you have an hour or so to kill with nothing to do or anything good on TV watch it. It is not boring, but it misses all of the little things that make a movie good and will have you asking why a lot.

REMAINS is yet another zombie movie, not quite as low budget as the very worst of the genre (DEADHEADS or THE ZOMBIE CHRONICLES) but pretty low budget all the same. I mean, the budget is enough to reasonably execute the premise and bring to life a ruined city and its environs, but not enough to provide a halfway decent script or memorable actors. The storyline involves a group of survivors holed up inside a casino after a zombie apocalypse. The casino setting is featured heavily in the film's poster and box art, but is severely underutilised; they could have been in any old building. This is an action-focused narrative with lots of shoot-outs and run-ins with fellow survivors. It's all low rent and rather cheesy, but not unentertaining. The story is based on a comic by Steve Niles and has some fun with zombies, making them more human than seen elsewhere. There's an undercurrent of black comedy running throughout, but it hurts that the human characters are less than interesting and you never really feel involved or care about what's happening to them. REMAINS is mildly watchable but entirely forgettable.

An accident turns the world's population into flesh-eating zombies, meanwhile a handful of the survivors holdup in a small, seedy casino. Remains (based on 'Steve Niles' graphic novel) has an interesting concept and some nice ideas including sleeping zombies. The backstreet lower end of Vegas setting add a visual, uneasy feel and the closing act and last thirty seconds stop it going to the grave. This budgeted post-apocalyptic flick is commendably filmed by Colin Theys and is better than most productions of its kind, that said, it sadly falls short on delivery with pacing issues and uneven effects. In addition, it simply lacks the tension it should have due to inconsistencies across the whole offering. Nevertheless, Remains is worth viewing if only out of interest and for the delightful and talented Evalena Marie.

Not bad. I too, am familiar and enjoy the Zombie genre, but am totally unfamiliar with the comic book series of the same name. Having said that, there were a few zombie surprises, a couple of good scares and a handful of humorous moments. Romero quality? No. But we can't have 50 Romero's can we? The movie did well with castings, but seriously the depth of this didn't require any big names for attraction. I had a few problems with the 'extra' actors--someone maybe even called them 'locals. Zombies typically don't make eye contact while they eat your fingers--they don't have eyes--At least eyes capable of showing any emotion. If you are going to ask an audience to believe in your zombie world, then stay in character and make them act like zombies--instead of local actors working in rubber proths. The newfangled zombie has found some speed, (see I am Legend), and this is less threatening actually than the slow cadence of death moving in quietly enmasse. The lead did a fine job of holding zombie world things together, his older Heath Ledger appearance gave him away as an Aussy in American clothes right off the bat, though he handled it fairly well with only the occasional slip. Not a movie to pay for in the theatre, but for sure a good DVD/Blue Ray renting.

Straight to Chiller, which is sorta like Straight to SyFy-only worse, zombie movie with unlikeable characters striving to survive their horrible career choices. Let's get to some SPOILERS... The beginning rips off Night of the Comet with anyone enclosed in metal surviving the zombification effect, brought on laboriously in this case, by some big nuclear bomb disposal factory asploding and affecting everybody in the world, or at least Reno. Does it really matter where the zombies came from? If they introduced the characters at all, I missed it on my first (and only) viewing, but they're all kinda jerks. One scene in particular irks me, where we go from a woman the two (semi)protagonists are trying to save get ripped to pieces by zombies, they jump out a window to escape said zombies, and then share a laugh down by the pool as water squirts out of her cowgirl boots. It's really sloppy storytelling, and you really don't care if anyone gets out of this alive and intact. It's based on a comic book that I haven't read, so I don't know if it's the comic's fault or the adapters. It was directed by the guy that directed Alien Opponent, another flick I saw on Chiller, but i didn't know that BEFORE I watched this, or I wouldn't have watched it. The zombies stray from the norm in that they go inactive at night, which I thought was sorta original, but then another poster commented that it would have been the perfect time for these losers to escape, and that brought me back to reality. CGI blood and bullets abound in this, which is reason enough to hate it. Let's get some squibs in here. Some army guys show up, and then they leave, two characters disappear, but since we don't like them we don't care. Right at the very end they try and tack some back-story onto the main guy to make him more sympathetic i guess, but it's too little too late. The pacing is so off in this, you wonder if they were hoping for a sequel or something. Again, poorly paced, badly written, and if i'd waited until tomorrow to write this review, i'd probably have forgotten most of it. Don't see.

I would normally ignore a flick with so many bad reviews but I made an exception in this case and I'm glad I did. Film overall is far from being a good Hollywood masterpiece, but it's fairly enjoyable. The poor aspects of the film would be make-up, cgi and more then just a few mistakes in the plot and zombie behavior. Sure the expectation of standard zombies shouldn't be based on Romero's films, but I personally believe he's created an excellent character that other filmmakers should look up to. The acting wasn't as bad as others are saying. And the main characters seemed good and well fitting in. Dunno if a choice of Lance Reddick as an actor for the film did it any good as in my opinion a random and unknown guy would have blended in much better. The film didn't feel overstretched and throughout the 90 min feature new events constantly took place which made the film interesting. I've given it 6 out of 10 as it's so much better then an average B rated low budget zombie film.

If you can get past the terrible production values, poor makeup FX, and mediocre acting, you have a somewhat decent script that might have worked in better hands. The director just doesn't make the best of anything and couldn't they give them another 350k come on guys can we at least make it a solid Million Dollar budget. I don't come to expect much from a Chiller Premiere but I have come to know that on a shoe string one can make a decent compelling TV movie. While they didn't exactly have Emmy Winning Actors they had a workable cast under better directorial guidance might have given us something a bit more entertaining. Its really to bad sometimes its better to have 5 good zombies in great makeup instead of 15 that are useless untrained locals.

Remains