Main cast: Grant Bowler (Tom), Evalena Marie (Tori), Miko Hughes (Jensen), Anthony Marks (Victor), Tawny Cypress (Cindy), and Lance Reddick (Ramsey)
Director: Colin Theys
Remains is based on some comic series of the same name, and it’s a zombie apocalypse movie. Well, that’s it, because sadly, once one has seen one zombie movie, one has already seen this one.
We’re in Reno, when a mushroom cloud transforms most of the folks there into zombies. There are some exceptions, such as our main cast of characters that happen to be safely tucked away somewhere when the mushroom cloud hit: Tom and Tori, two bored and jaded casino employees that were in the storage room with her letting him shag her after he’d offered her some lines to snort; Jensen the magician that happens to be in the storeroom sorting his props. I’m not sure how Victor manages to escape being turned, but he ends up running to the casino where the other three are holed up, and the four of them are stuck there trying to figure out how to get out of the hell hole that Reno has become.
Of course, later on the men from the army show up to cause problems, because we can’t have a zombie movie without some “Humans, bad! Bad, bad, bad!” elements—it’s mandatory, kind of like a movie law or something.
Grant Bowler makes for an attractive rugged hero here, but Tom is also a pretty generic character. He’s that quintessential cynical fellow that tries not to care about anything, but he can’t help doing the nicest things anyway even if being nice would be the dumbest thing he could do in that instance. Tori is the pragmatic lone wolf type that often says the sanest, if not overly nice, things, but she’s portrayed as the mean one in this movie for some reason. Maybe having a survival instinct is bad during a zombie apocalypse. The rest don’t really make much of an impact because they aren’t around long enough or they are one-dimensional and not memorable.
Making things worse is that the movie unfurls in a manner that is as generic as the main characters. Nothing here feels fresh or new, it’s just another zombie movie that plays out in a predictable manner. Perhaps the only surprising thing about this movie is how it casually disposes of the arguably most likable character of the bunch. Then again, that character appears the nicest because this person is also a bland, personality-free type that only appears nice because everyone else is loud, argumentative, and prone to making the dumbest decisions at critical moments.
Is Remains a bad movie? Well, nobody is likely getting hurt watching this, and the guys that take off their shirts clearly worked hard to look good in that state, but that’s the only thing worth remembering about this generic thing. Some movies are bad enough to transcend into awesomeness, but this one is just so bland that it resides straight in the “Who cares?” territory.
