Review of The Remaining (2014) by Thequietgamer — 12 May 2017

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.