#TheChildRemains | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

adamwatchesmovies · 4 years ago

Text

The Child Remains (2017)

You immediately recognize The Child Remains as a low-budget Canadian production. You want to give it a break. Who knows where the story will go? Then you notice Michael Melski wrote, produced, and directed it. I can’t think of any but there must be lousy-looking pictures with only a single person at the helm who defied the odds. I played nice and got rewarded with nothing. Now, it's payback.

Rae (Suzanne Clément) and her husband Liam (Allan Hawco) are vacationing in a small inn - formerly a maternity home. There, Rae experiences disturbing visions of murders and gruesome operations. The owner, Monica (Shelley Thompson), assures them nothing about the building's history could inspire any unease but there's evil within the walls.

I always aim to keep my synopsis spoiler-free. I shouldn’t have to this time. The movie shows you that Monica’s mother was a baby-murdering psycho who tortured pregnant, unwed mothers and sold the "adoptable" children on the black market. From there, the story could’ve gone in several directions. 1) a ghost(s) pushes Rae to solve the mystery. 2) It could turn out that the evil that “ended” years ago is still going on (Rae is three months pregnant… so maybe). 3) We get an even more shocking revelation about the murders, that they were part of secret experiments or satanic rituals. 4) the deformed baby we never see Monica’s mother kill could come back because it’s the son of a demon or wants to be born again or something similar. Which does The Child Remains choose? All of the above. Listen, guys. You can’t even make a basic ghost story right. Don’t try and make four at a time.

Even those who know nothing about camerawork or cinematography will notice something’s off right away. It’s all amateurish, a quality which applies to the performances too. Clément probably fares best out of everyone but to be fair, the material gives them nothing to work with. The scares are non-existent. It's a lousy story with numerous plot holes and contrivances. Deep in the woods, Rae finds a baby graveyard. If it was that easy, why didn't the authorities didn’t find it while investigating the allegations? Why are there even markers there? Why does a journal from 42 years earlier just happen to find its way into Rae's hands? Why the constant reminders of the bad phone reception? Why the shroud over evil mommy’s face in all the flashbacks? because the plot demands it.

I’m confident more money and creative juices were poured into the marketing of The Child Remains than the film itself. Shot in 2017, only released in 2019 (which means even Canadian audiences are only “discovering” it now). A quote boasts, “Phenomenal… up there with the greatest horror movies ever made.” Pfft. By comparison, the tagline “Inspired by True Events” seems downright factual. Only when it goes completely bonkers does The Child Remains stop being a cascade of incompatible ideas and clichés. (October 6, 2020)

#TheChildRemains #movies #films #horrormovies #horrorfilms #canadianMovies #CanadianFims #MichaelMelski #Suzanne Clément #AllanHawco #Shelley Thompson #Géza Kovács #2017movies #2017films

1 note · View note