one of my absolute favorites!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The graduation student Mark is developing a monograph work about contemporary myths, and he interviews the psychiatrist Dr. Theodore Rosen, who was treating Carl Bryce, a deranged teenager that killed his parents twenty years ago. The body of Carl has never been found and there is an urban legend that the spot is a cursed place since slavery times, causing madness and death to those that trespass the area. Mark invites his friends Eric, Tyler, Kristy Goodman and Sharon to help him in his research in the old real estate. Once there, a mysterious killer starts to execute and chase the group, with the survivors trying to escape alive.Excruciatingly slow horror movie. Talk talk talk and no action.Don't waste your time.

I have seen so many horror films and while I was desperately trying to find something new that I had not seen, I came across this little gem. No spoilers here. All I want to comment on is the fact that this horror film is the first one of its kind in awhile to have not only good acting, but above average acting. I was extremely surprised to see how solid the acting was in this film. There are four people in particular who were really good in this. The two female leads and the two guys who play brother's in this film were just fantastic. The film as a whole just tells a good story and incorporates believable performances with solid film-making. It really is a solid film.

Witness the modern evolution of the slasher pic: the kids have grown up a little, gotten themselves lives (kinda) and Dark Secrets, the killers are more vague and shadowy than they were before, and the editors all have ADHD. But, once you get beyond that, it's plain to see that Evil Remains doesn't really bring anything new to the table.For instance, we start this ride with a flashback to a brutal crime that occurred 20 years earlier. I ask you, how many horror films made since, say, 1978 have started with essentially the same device? But, let's go with it for now. After seeing an entire family killed, we slide forward to the present, where Mark is planning to investigate the site of the murder with an eye toward debunking the curse that locals believe hangs over the property. He takes along his brother Tyler, an expendable techie, and a pair of lesbians played by a couple of up-and-coming actresses who must not be so up-and-coming anymore, seeing as how they made this film.Of course, anyone who's seen Sorority House Massacre can tell where this is headed. (You mean you haven't seen Sorority House Massacre? For shame!) People get creepy feelings, see and hear weird stuff, and eventually start turning up dead. In the end, one girl is left alive and no one believes her story. Yada, yada, roll credits. But, so that we know that this is a modern slasher, the cast spend their spare time psychoanalyzing each other and trying to sound deep instead of partying and bedhopping like weasels in heat. And, since we're in the post-Blair Witch era, the identity of the killer remains vague and indistinct, more a property of the locale than an actual character.Visually, Evil Remains is a mixed bag. Kind of Robert Altman meets Chris Carter meets digital postproduction and they all go out and have too many drinks and are hung over the next day. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes so much is happening at once in such a dark room that you totally lose track of the action.Overall, while I wouldn't actually recommend this movie, I would call it another perfectly serviceable entry in the long and proud lineage of low-budget slasher pics. And as long as they keep making them, we keep watching them, whether we like it, or not. Pity us.

Evil Remains references, pays homage to, or just blatantly rips off every classic as well as recently released horror movie. In the first two scenes, there are snippets of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Blair Witch Project, Jeepers Creepers, The Hills Have Eyes, The Evil Dead, Halloween, and fill in the blank, because when the credits roll you will be hard pressed to name at least one slasher film that hasn't been scavenged.Nonetheless, this is a solid if not very original movie. Director James Merendino forgot it takes a lot of humor to glue together so many disparate pieces but that doesn't stop him from referencing two similar scavenger films that were quite funny, House of 1,000 Corpses and Cabin Fever. As a result a movie that could have been good is just a cut above the average slasher flick, no pun intended. Merendino also left out another essential ingredient for this genre: T&A. This will not start a trend.The story is otherwise boilerplate slasher. Five students prowl around an abandoned plantation that is the subject of a vague legend. Four will die and one will live, and with this movie that isn't a spoiler. Two of the three male students are brothers, bonded by what apparently was a bad childhood (guess what happens before we know).Yeoman acting is bolstered by standout performances from an uncredited Kurtwood Smith as the sagacious shrink and Estella Warren and Ashley Scott as lesbians who tag along to help on the ill-defined graduate work. The on-location New Orleans scenes also lend a creepy atmosphere to this otherwise ordinary film. Yet this is somewhat offset by production and continuity flaws, which include an abandoned house that is fully lighted in one scene.