Like Paranormal Activity at a wedding - Paranuptial Activity? - this low-budget horror has its moment. Much, much better than Legion, although not as scary as the actual Book of Revelation.
La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.
A faith-based horror film. Based on the book of Revelations, "The Remaining" gives us a look at the end of the world as it is foretold in the Bible. What's remarkable about the film is how well it is executed. For starters it's a very good looking film and the cast is totally game. It still suffers from having characters you just don't care about and being too derivative of the Paranormal Activity series, but this is surprisingly not a bad movie. Boring here and there, but never bad. The melding of sermon and horror is actually well-executed. There's definitely a message here that the movie is actively trying to present to viewers, but unlike so many other religious films it doesn't feel heavy-handed or forced. It's preaching is a natural part of the movie that flows well. It's arguably the most well-written part of the film. It follows the book of Revelations pretty closely and is much more interesting than the bland love triangle or the newly-weds sappy love (this is set at a wedding BTW). Those aspects fall short because of how lame the characters are. Like the average modern horror flick that hits the big-screen these days, everyone is so vanilla and really just there to scream at whatever goes bump in the night and get killed by it. At least they aren't so obnoxious you actively hate them. You just don't care about what they're doing so much.
As a horror film, The Remaining is also better than one would expect. It's not scary by any means and is yet another Paranormal Activity wannabe. It's not entirely found-footage though so that's a good thing. I actually don't think it would have been so bad if it was though. The moments where the movie is shot in the found-footage style are genuinely good. Even when the camera is shaking around I had no time following the action. These moments are clear and attractive. More than I can say about the vast majority of movies that have tried their hand at it, horror or otherwise. Still, the attempts at scares are very familiar. It's all jump scares where people are pulled off-screen by some unseen force à la Paranormal Activity.
None if it very original and it falls into several modern horror movie trappings, but darn is it better than anyone would reasonably expect. I mean, a Christian horror film? That just sounds too absurd to be believed. Yet, here it is and it's not bad by any means. It's not particularly good, but certainly well-executed and better than quite a few of the horror movies I've watched in my time. With better characters and more original attempts at scares this may have even been something special. As it stands now it's an oddity, but a surprisingly solid one.
As Christian knock-offs of secular films go, The Remaining is surprisingly respectable. At the risk of crazily overrating the film, The Remaining has to qualify as one of the most stirringly adequate, totally acceptable explicitly Christian horror movies ever made.
This is Christian horror. It was a decent, documentary-style horror. Surprisingly decent actually, but what it is most successful at is reserving the Christian cheese-fest towards the last 10 minutes of the film. It is cringe-inducing, but at least it is a very small amount of time. Overall, I kind of enjoyed it, I hoped they showed more of the book of Revelations because their gritty/realistic take on that story was surprisingly engaging. The change in eye color was ingenious.
In order to enjoy this, there should be a preamble to friends: this is Christian-centric and has a preachy/public service announcement ending. Will I watch it again? No.
Well, this could have been a WHOLE lot worse. Let's put it that way. Pretty decent production value. And this is a christian horror film. ...but what was the message supposed to be? That we're supposed to be happy to die? How is an unbeliever supposed to respond to this? Looks all terrible for them... =(
I was hoping for a good exciting suspense movie like Cloverfield, which has the same director, but this time it was not so suspense, I give it score 3/10 . Like half of humanity died, and they talk about peanut butter .
It somehow seems appropriate that a Christian story from the Bible should be adapted into a cheesy horror flick. I gave it an extra star for some effective visuals and decent performances. By the way, I am NOT a Christian nor do I believe in the Bibles fairy tales.
I'm pretty sure that Jesus would be like "ya'll be crazy". This was seriously the most ridiculous portrayal of Christian beliefs EVER. Jesus was all, love your brother umm be kind to people umm not kill folks. So **** you seriously believe that there is a dude in the sky judging you and keeping a tally of everything you do & if you f*ck up then he punishes you then you may want to re-think your beliefs...just sayin.