Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

eringobraugh86 The storyline says the curse began on a plantation where an evil madame practiced experiments on her slaves. Further than that, she was discovered as a witch because her cook was chained to the stove and started a fire. The fire department came to help and discovered a room where they found some slaves dead, some alive, and some not even recognized as human anymore.Here is where my spoiler alert ends, and a little knowledge is dropped on you. For the less educated, who simply say this is another chainsaw massacre, jeepers creepers, or "done to death" teen slasher, I'd like to say that I mean no offense in the "less educated" comment. It is actually true, only because I have studied the case of Madame Delphine LaLaurie of the New Orleans French Quarter. You haven't studied her or her sadistic behaviors, so you would never know that this film is actually based on a real person and real events.Madame LaLaurie's parents were killed by slaves in the Haiti Revolution, she married 3 times, had 2 daughters, and her last husband was a doctor. She was THE aristocratic woman to be in the 18oos, but disdained her slaves. She murdered many, and buried them in the floors and walls of her home, as well as tossed them down the well in their courtyard.Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, taught her voodoo. She then branched out as a Satan worshiper. When the cook set fire to the home, she was chained to the stove. She did so because her grandson was being sent to the attic, where no slave ever returned.Madame would try to practice sex changes on her slaves, would scramble their brains with iron rods, break there bones and reset them to look like sea creatures and then jam them in cages for medium sized dogs, peel their skin back to watch stages of infection, sew mouths shut with fecal matter packed inside, sew body parts of slaves to other slaves, and more... all while the slaves would be alive.She did all of this with the help of her henchman, Sebastian, who was a slave who was also her lover, and kept his rank by doing harm to others for her pleasure. When she was discovered as a monster after the fire, they took off in her carriage across lake Pontchartrain. They were never heard from again, and there is no agreed upon proof of whether she returned to France, died across the lake, or any sort of outcome. Legend says she still practiced her dark magic across the lake, had followers, and lived her days out there. There are still people who go to practice along the lake banks, and make sacrifices to Madame, who was believed a witch.

Dr. Gore *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* I rented this one because I saw the blonde from "Planet of the Apes" on the video box cover. All I wanted was an Estella Warren slasher flick. What I got instead is a mystery to me. Lots of yelling and screaming but not nearly enough Warren slashing.So five dopes head to an abandoned plantation that may be cursed. The main guy is there to prove that there is no such thing as curses at scary mansions with a history of violence. He must have never watched a horror flick before. Suffice to say, there's something funky going on. Evil Remains at the big house. How this evil manifests itself will forever be a mystery to the perplexed and irritated audience.Basically, this is one of those B-flicks that has their cast members have a nervous breakdown from all of the "evil" around them. So the dopes yell and scream at each other and somehow die horribly. Did one of them commit all of the murders or is there someone else having all of the fun? Who knows? The filmmakers don't feel the need to share that information and would rather have you scratch your head. Warren runs for her life from a madman but it ends on a sour note that negates the chase and pretty much the whole movie.

pierotti Like some others the only reason I rented this movie was because of Estella Warren. Not just because she is a hot babe, but because she seems to be trying to develop into an interesting actress, however, she also seems to be struggling with the types of films and roles she is offered.Overall Evil Remains is a mess. Most scenes are filmed in natural light which especially in the indoor scenes makes everything hard to see and action very difficult to follow. The film to which it bears the greatest resemblance for the first hour or so is not the slasher movies to which it is regularly compared, but the very strange and disturbing Session 9, which also concerns a group of people trying to function in place of great spiritual disturbance.For some reason the male and female characters are completely separate for all of the crucial action. Perhaps this is related to the alleged lesbian theme, which is never developed. I still have no idea what happens to any of the male characters except two of them seem to die, of course that's hardly news in a movie of this kind. I'll return to the third male character later.Meanwhuile the two women wander the woods and find lots of bear traps, the function of which is never explained. This keeps the women away from the house so they can conveniently return to be threatened by something? I'm still not sure what. Anyway during the whole film Estella Warren's Christy is the only character who ever seems to act in a rational matter, making her sort of the equivalent of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloweeen.I think that one major issue with Estella's career is that she almost always plays a strong, sensible woman who happens to be lovely, For some reason this combination seems offputting, perhaps even threatening, to the teenage boys at whom most Hollywood films are targeted. In every movie she's been in, except for The Cooler, Estella has been the strongest and most memorable character. In the wretched remake of Planet of the Apes she was the frustrated young human who had to watch Marky Mark disappear up his own asshole. In Driven she played the only actual woman present. In Tangles she played a funny sexy girl caught up in the head games of a trio of self-involved neurotics. In Kangaroo Jack she appears to be the only character who can think things out. Now in Evil Remains she is again the strong woman faced with insanity and irrational behavior.(Spoiler Alert) The intelligence of her character means that she is the only apparent survivor. My suspicion was that Mark was the actual killer, possessed by the spirit of the house, or some such nonsense. He is the only other character you never see die. This would also explain the professor's odd warnings about "being sure of your reasons for going" at the beginning and end of the film. Having said this, I hate the ending of this film. The implication that Christy, as the only survivor, would be accused of all the deaths and locked up is nihilistic and does not conform to the spirit of such films.To sum up this film wants to be more than it is. It is not really frightening to anyone used to such films. Like Session 9, what it is is dreary and depressing.

Li-1 Rating: *** out of **** I'll admit it, the deciding factor that made me seek out this film was Estella Warren. Sure, she displayed little acting talent and almost no screen presence in any of her prior roles, but there's no questioning she's a total hottie and seeing her in the role of a scream queen was a dream come true. To my utmost surprise, both she and the movie are pretty damn good, making this movie one of the more pleasant surprises of the past few months.Evil Remains is about a small group of graduate students (five in all) who head to a long-abandoned plantation estate to help one of the guys do his thesis on myths. The plantation itself is the site of a popular myth, that the land is cursed and whoever trespasses will find themselves with an uncontrollable urge to act on their rage. Upon their arrival, the guys set up the equipment in the house while the two girls (Estella Warren and Ashley Scott), who also happen to be lesbians, go for a short walk in the woods, not knowing their return to the house will be a particularly bloody and messy one.Right from the beginning, Evil Remains is immediately distinguished by the effective direction of James Merendino, who has a knack for developing creepy atmosphere, building suspense, and even delivering a few genuine scares. Despite the fact that natural lighting typically annoys me (and it does make it a bit difficult to tell apart the male characters for a while), it's used to good effect, giving the movie a stark look that works especially well during the nighttime scenes.Merendino handles the stalk-and-slash sequences superbly; the second half of the film is essentially a series of bloody slasher action and exciting chase scenes that utilize both the claustrophobic and wide-spaced settings fairly well. The house itself is only explored to a mildly satisfying effect, but it's an effectively constricted location that immeasurably aids in tightening the suspense, especially in one scene where the survivors find themselves anxiously awaiting the killer on the other side of the door.Taking everything into consideration, I was most surprised by the performances, which are all quite good. The gorgeously hot Estella Warren is especially excellent as the smart, likable heroine who actually thinks the situation through before acting. As a matter of fact, I was quite amazed by Warren's work here, since she showed no discernible acting talent in any other film I've seen her in. The only one in the cast that doesn't quite hold up is Ashley Scott, who's not bad, but the role requires her to do little more than whine.The movie is still obviously not without its flaws. Despite the solid acting, the movie does little to establish its characters, in particular the two brothers with a troubled past that's brought up but dropped just as quickly in favor of some bloody slasher action. The decision to make the lead a lesbian is interesting (the only other slasher I've seen that made its heroine a lesbian was Deep in the Woods, but it only seemed like an excuse for nudity in that flick), but it ultimately makes little difference, as Warren and Ashley Scott could merely have played best friends and no one would be the wiser, but at least it prevents Warren from having a forced romance with one of the male characters.A few of the characters could also show a little more common sense; one guy sees a freaky-looking image on a photo he just took, but neglects to show it to anyone else as incentive to leave. Another guy leaps off the roof of the house to escape but actually ends up backing himself towards the front door! And there's one lengthy scene that'll have you shouting "close the damn door!" Most disappointing is a potentially exciting chase scene through the woods that makes an abrupt segue that temporarily kills the momentum.The plot's also a little hazy, there's no sense of clarity regarding exactly what it is the curse does and how a masked killer would specifically factor into it. Still, the film works for what it is, a fast-paced slasher with a number of bloody kills, exciting chases, and a terrifically secluded setting. Definitely recommended to genre fans.