Dark Remains (2005)

Director: Brian Avenet-Bradley

Starring: Cheri Christian, Greg Thompson, Scott Hodges, Jeff Evans, Rachel Jordan, Michelle Kegley

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Pain never dies

Plot: When the daughter Emma of the technical writer Allen Pyke and the photographer Julie is found slashed in the throat and wrists in their locked apartment, the couple decides to move to an isolated cabin in the mountains in Kingspike. Julie is very depressed and blames Allen for the death of Emma. Once in the new home, Julie sees the spirit of Emma in a photo she took in a nearby abandoned prison and she becomes obsessed shooting pictures of poltergeists. Allen is advised to move from the place by the local Jim Payne, and on May 21st, Allen finds that the former dwellers of the cabin have committed suicide, and he investigates the death in the spot and finds that many people died around May 22nd. He decides to move with Julie to a hotel, but she does not want to give up on Emma.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? Anyone want a used copy?

Woof. There must have been 73 people in the cast and crew because that's how many perfect 10 scores this picture got on IMDb. This isn't nowhere near a 10. It's a relatively good looking picture with a cast that sometimes does well but there are far too many moments where many of the actors show they shouldn't skip any more classes. The story is fine but it seems like it would have been better served as a 50 minute film. I think that if the writer/director Avenet-Bradley took the budget and applied it to a film half its length he would have ended up with a much better product. The other big issue is the handling of the ghosts. It doesn't take long before you get the feeling A-B likes ghosts walking or floating across the screen in the background behind the main character and that he likes it enough to do it over and over and over again. Add to that having a score that punctuates each appearance. It's cheap and it rarely works. I can't fault too much a low budget film that doesn't have things that cost money like quality actors, special effects (which were quite good, btw), etc but dragging this out to 90 minutes is something that didn't need to happen and the abundance of jump scares is inexcusable.