Dark Remains

DARK REMAINS

Four syllables spring to mind as I reflect on the experience of watching the 2005 film Dark Remains on DVD: bland characters.  If either or both of the leads had been even remotely quirky or distinctive in any way, I might have been able to overlook the semi-coherent plot and the ending that makes no sense.  The story follows a married couple (Julie & Allen Pyke) whose daughter is murdered.  To make a fresh start, the two relocate from a city to a remote cabin on a mountain.  Julie takes photographs while Allen (a technical writer) pounds away at his laptop computer.  Their nearest neighbor is a recluse named Jim.  Julie becomes fixated on an abandoned prison near the cabin and obsessively photographs its interior after she thinks she sees her dead daughter in one print.  Two friends of the Pykes stop by for a visit, and one sees a ghost during the night.  Allen learns that the last couple to inhabit the cabin committed suicide.  He goes to the library to research local history and finds that a lot of mysterious deaths occur in the area on or around May 22 every year.  Neighbor Jim (who it turns out discovered his mother’s corpse when he was a young lad) murders the sheriff for no good reason.  Jim then attempts to kill the Pykes, but Julie shoots him.  Allen spouts some nonsense about how Jim was somehow responsible for causing all the hauntings in the area.  I realize it makes little sense, but that’s the plot in a nutshell.  I did appreciate the musical score.

Steer clear of this half-baked ghost story.  The imagery is periodically creepy, though Brian Avenet-Bradley (the auteur behind the project) overuses the trick of having something spooky (like a quick glimpse of a ghost) appear in the background unnoticed by the characters in the foreground.  I wasted an hour and a half of my life following this tale.  Don’t make the same mistake.  Avoid.