Trespassing (2004)

Touches You

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I have seen so many horror films and while I was desperately trying to find something new that I had not seen, I came across this little gem. No spoilers here. All I want to comment on is the fact that this horror film is the first one of its kind in awhile to have not only good acting, but above average acting. I was extremely surprised to see how solid the acting was in this film. There are four people in particular who were really good in this. The two female leads and the two guys who play brother's in this film were just fantastic. The film as a whole just tells a good story and incorporates believable performances with solid film-making. It really is a solid film.

I rented Evil Remains because I saw James Merendino's SLC Punk and liked that film allot. I thought since SLC Punk was so clever, I bet Merendino writing and directing a horror film would be equally as such, not to mention a good idea. But in my opinion I my judgment was made premature. Evil Remains is a decent little horror flick when compared to most of the b-schlock that is out there. In fact after my initial viewing I found out that this film was at one time slated for a national release, but after the executives watched the film it quickly changed to home video. You see as negatively as I'm painting this picture for you, there is some decent acting with several fleeting minute's enjoyable slasher fun. All in all I liked this film but the storyline and ending really don't make for a great ride. But then again the films premise may have been made to avoid that feeling of a great ride. So in conclusion I liked this film, but if was to watch the film again, I wouldn't rather check out one of the great films that everyone has already viewed.

Like some others the only reason I rented this movie was because of Estella Warren. Not just because she is a hot babe, but because she seems to be trying to develop into an interesting actress, however, she also seems to be struggling with the types of films and roles she is offered.Overall Evil Remains is a mess. Most scenes are filmed in natural light which especially in the indoor scenes makes everything hard to see and action very difficult to follow. The film to which it bears the greatest resemblance for the first hour or so is not the slasher movies to which it is regularly compared, but the very strange and disturbing Session 9, which also concerns a group of people trying to function in place of great spiritual disturbance.For some reason the male and female characters are completely separate for all of the crucial action. Perhaps this is related to the alleged lesbian theme, which is never developed. I still have no idea what happens to any of the male characters except two of them seem to die, of course that's hardly news in a movie of this kind. I'll return to the third male character later.Meanwhuile the two women wander the woods and find lots of bear traps, the function of which is never explained. This keeps the women away from the house so they can conveniently return to be threatened by something? I'm still not sure what. Anyway during the whole film Estella Warren's Christy is the only character who ever seems to act in a rational matter, making her sort of the equivalent of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloweeen.I think that one major issue with Estella's career is that she almost always plays a strong, sensible woman who happens to be lovely, For some reason this combination seems offputting, perhaps even threatening, to the teenage boys at whom most Hollywood films are targeted. In every movie she's been in, except for The Cooler, Estella has been the strongest and most memorable character. In the wretched remake of Planet of the Apes she was the frustrated young human who had to watch Marky Mark disappear up his own asshole. In Driven she played the only actual woman present. In Tangles she played a funny sexy girl caught up in the head games of a trio of self-involved neurotics. In Kangaroo Jack she appears to be the only character who can think things out. Now in Evil Remains she is again the strong woman faced with insanity and irrational behavior.(Spoiler Alert) The intelligence of her character means that she is the only apparent survivor. My suspicion was that Mark was the actual killer, possessed by the spirit of the house, or some such nonsense. He is the only other character you never see die. This would also explain the professor's odd warnings about "being sure of your reasons for going" at the beginning and end of the film. Having said this, I hate the ending of this film. The implication that Christy, as the only survivor, would be accused of all the deaths and locked up is nihilistic and does not conform to the spirit of such films.To sum up this film wants to be more than it is. It is not really frightening to anyone used to such films. Like Session 9, what it is is dreary and depressing.

Stop and think about it...did anyone NOT notice the "old haunted house" that on the outside looked like it just came off one of those new siding commercials, yet the inside looked abandoned? Who was mowing the lawn and taking care of the flowers by the steps - hey this is in the swamps and grass grows year long.Some of the reviewers comments, especially the ones that rated this film a "10" well, yeah, I used to smoke that stuff too before going to a movie...I was surprised to see the soundtrack in Dolby, not Ultra-Stereo or some other second rate sound system. Did anyone notice how s-l-o-w the end credits rolled and that horrible sound (some call music) that went with the end credits?