Preview: Chiller’s – Steve Niles’ Remains
Steve Nile’s Remains is based on the IDW Comic based in a post apocalyptic Reno Nevada. An accident occurs on Peace Day that turns most of the world into Zombies. The story follows a handful of survivors and their struggle to keep the Zombie hordes at bay.
I know that most movies based on Comics or books are usually pretty far off the source material, but they are usually interesting enough to make me want to check out the original story. Remains does not make me want to check out the comic. I hope for the readers of the comic that is is much better than what Chiller has produced. It would almost have to be. Remains was for the most part incredibly boring, and the main characters are so stupid that they very quickly become annoying, to the point where you hope one of the zombies get them. There were not even very many interesting zombie kills, for the most part they basically just lock the zombies into various rooms of the Casino they are trapped in. One zombie in particular they just shove into an industrial dryer. Call me crazy, but once you know head trauma stops the zombies, maybe you should start up the dryer instead of just locking it in there, it could just bang around enough to kill it.
The one interesting concept brought up In Remains is that the zombies appear to be evolving into faster smarter zombies as they eat more people and other zombies. That’s right these are Cannibal Zombies. Unfortunately this revelation that the zombies are becoming much more interesting characters than the main cast comes far too late in the movie and there isn’t really any time to do anything with it.
Sadly as a first movie from Chiller, Steve Niles’ Remains is a very poor offering, I think Zombie Apocalypse that SyFy put out about a month ago was a much more enjoyable movie, and anyone who reads this page on a regular basis or listens to our podcast knows how I usually feel about SyFy’s movies. Maybe I was expecting more from Chiller being a horror channel and expected them to put some real effort into producing a half way decent zombie movie, and not just turn out junk.
The production values on Remains is actually pretty good, unfortunately the acting and story are substandard at best. I hope it is just because the screener wasn’t finalized although everything else looked finished, but in one scene a character who has lost 2 fingers suddenly has them back and then in the following scene they are gone again.
To summarize, if you really like Zombie movies, the Remains comic, or if you just need some undead entertainment to kill a couple of hours this movie may be for you. Don;t tune in if you are looking for a good movie though.
On a scale of 1 to 5 I give Steve Niles’ Remains on Chiller a 1. I usually don’t give less than a 1, because I believe there is always a worse movie around the corner.
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