Remnants

Years after a plague has destroyed society, driving humanity back behind high walls, where they slowly finished collapsing, Remnants follows three survivors as they trek north across a post-apocalyptic America in search of a safer life.

Cheap zombies movies truly are a cinematic plague.

Time was, when you needed a low budget film of blood and boobies and explosions, good for a quick bit of money laundering and maybe even a nice infusion of cash, you just took a retooled script for a Western, a camera crew, some beat-up vehicles, a little bit of local talent learning the ropes and building a resume, plus a few strippers, and you headed out into the desert outside of Los Angeles. A week or two later, you came back with a sunburn and a half-decent Mad Max rip-off. Then, between the waiting VHS market and late night cable licensing, everyone made a little bit of money and walked away happy.

These days, especially with IPhones and editing software, it’s nothing but the cheapest of bad zombie movies, made on a whim by trust-fund babies and mediocre failsons. Filled with props purchased in the Walmart toy aisle, and relying on ketchup-based gore, they’re usually crewed by bored and clueless friends and family, shot with no script to speak of, let alone much equipment beyond a camera, and with a definite lack of talent on both sides of it. I watch all of these films, just like I did the old Mad Max rip-offs, because I’m a sucker for the genre, and besides, sometimes the magic happens, but mostly, all these delusional ad-hoc half-ass zombie flops do is make me miss the days of the fast, cheap, and easy post-apocalyptic desert warrior movies.

Plus, I always wonder, how does anyone make any money at all from these terrible failures? Especially with no Direct-to-video market or Cable licensing left? A three dollar rental on Prime every now and then can’t be paying the bills.

Anyway, for me, the worst thing about these films are the incredibly stupid alternate names they will come up with in order to avoid calling the film’s monsters “Zombies,” and instead opt for terrible ideas like “rotters" or “stalkers” or “roamers" or “lurkers” or “geeks” or “empties” or “biters” or “creepers” or “growlers” or “stinkers” or “lame brains” or “deadheads,” on and on, a seemingly endless litany of stupid nonsense. It’s not only embarrassingly dumb-sounding, but it’s unnatural feeling too, none of them feel organic, like something that would possibly believably culturally evolve amongst the fictional world’s survivors, and the effort that these hacks put into trying to avoid saying the obviously better names, the ones that make more sense—like “The Dead” for example—is too obvious. It’s all too much work for too little of a narrative pay off.

So, when it comes to these cheap zombie movies, there’s basically two types.

The first kind are the ones that just do a straight forward regular-ass zombie flick, classic set-up, classic setting, classic Romero Rules versions of zombies (meaning that when a character dies, they get up and kill. The people they kill, get up and kill!). This first kind of cheap zombie movie either succeeds or fails on their own merit.

The second kind of cheap zombie films are the ones that try to “reinvent” zombies in some way, how they act, how they got infected, etc. etc.. Much like the effort involved with avoiding calling the zombies “zombies,” this is almost always a bad idea, almost always poorly conceived, and pretty much never adds anything to the genre, nothing but unnecessary overthinking about an aspect that doesn’t need to be fixed. The fact that the filmmakers even attempt something like this is usually a good indication that the film itself is going to be bad, usually because they spent too much time creating these dumb new Rules for Zombies, and not nearly enough time on things like the script, or maybe on knowing how to light a scene…

Just for example…

In this movie, the characters call the zombies “vapes.” This is for reasons I didn’t quite catch, but I think it has to do with the idea that in this world, infection can happen by inhaling gases expelled by the zombies, but that’s never really very clear. The zombies are apparently created when a big tapeworm kind of thing that burrows into a person, the person then dies from that, and they then reanimate, possibly being driven by the tapeworms? It’s unclear. Infection can not only happen by inhaling zombie breath, but I think a person can also be infected when a zombie barfs tapeworms on them, or maybe that’s just gross, I don’t know, this was also unclear. There is also something about telltale stains that can be seen around areas where the zombies are, but it’s not very clear what that means, or even what the stains really look like.

Everywhere you look on the internet, Remnants makes sure to tout itself as a “festival favorite,” one that secured two "Best Film" awards and a "Best Director" award during its “15 festival” run.

Not to take anything away from the filmmakers, good for them, but this only sounds impressive if you’re unaware of how many genre festivals there are out there, and just how hungry they all are for content to pad out their entry list. A lot of these festivals are just a half dozen or so low budget local films being shown together, an event that is often set up by some of the entrants themselves, and the films are screened in a bar or a rec center or a rented-out second run theatre, and most of the attendees are also people who entered films. This isn’t a bad thing. I mean, why not? Sure, have your big premiere, enjoy it, celebrate your art, but it’s not exactly Sundance, y’know? Between this, and the fact that “Festival brain” is definitely something that happens whenever a bunch of drunk, hyped-up folks in a good mood all see a movie together, especially when the films are loud and silly and gory, and most especially when the filmmakers are in the audience. The experience itself was a blast, so often times, the festival-goers will walk out, having enjoyed themselves, so they give subpar films enthusiastic thumbs up.

I mean, people at Fantastic Fest gave Fashionista a good review.

Crazy shit happens at festivals, people.

My point is, I expect something like this is what happened with Remnants, because… it’s just not good. It’s awful, really, but not so much “bad” as it is generally inept.

Following a trio of survivors as they head across a desolate and empty America, there’s Mason (the writer and director, doing a really bad Sam Elliot impersonation, and often wearing a somehow even worse wig), Cash (the “funny” one), and Kyla (the girl in the bikini). Never more than 2-D characters, their dialogue is so much wannabe cool guy grim and gritty talk, it almost makes you wonder if it’s on purpose, if maybe this film is actually a satire of the kind of tac-gear obsessed, wannabe SOG operator cosplay nonsense that the guys who take Call of Duty too seriously would write. But, nope… it’s just a hodge-podge of melodramatic, transparently performative Last of Us/Dark Knight fanfic obviously cribbed from better stories.

The synopsis clearly says the characters are “trekking north,” and that we will be following them on that journey. The film’s poster very prominently says “Never stop moving,” insinuating that this story isn’t just about a journey, but a chase, a relentless one too, one with very little chance for rest. But for the most part, the characters stay in just one location, a place that is obviously someone’s parents’ beach house. Even worse, other than “looting” the beach house’s garage from different angles, all to hide the fact that it’s the same location, the characters just sit around and chat about their trauma of being a child in the Apocalypse, forced to be a part of a gang of looters, or being part of “Death Match” underground fight clubs in the walled cities, all while alternating between the saddest attempts at tough guy gallows humor and the trio’s implied love triangle flirting. Worst of all… this basically repeats itself throughout the film, the same boring cliched interactions over and over.

It’s so bad.

According to the Director/Writer/Star, the movie Remnants was filmed “over the course of 8 years, for the authenticity of the lead character's aging,” and after seeing the film, I have no idea what he’s talking about, except maybe that a whole bunch of alternate script versions ended up on the cutting room floor… eight years of Finding the Film in Post, I guess. But also, he’s the lead character, so why doesn’t he just say… “my aging”? But that aside, at a certain point over the course of that eight years, the filmmakers needed to ask themselves a couple of questions. “What story are we telling here?” and “What are we trying to say with this story?” and there is nothing more clear in this film then the fact that they did not do that.

Obviously hampered by a lack of a budget and resources, beyond just being badly written and executed, beyond being criminally under-lit, not to mention cast with obvious amateurs, locals, and available friends of the producers, the bottom line here is that there’s just zero tension to Remnants, and for an action-horror film, there’s very little in the way of any actual action or horror.

So, don’t believe the faint praise of a few awards from their 15 festival run, because Remnants is just a straight-up bad film, and even worse, it’s boring.

It’s not worth your time. Don’t bother.