The Child Remains is Michael Melski’s newest horror movie/crime drama/psychological thriller. Based in part on the Butter Box Babies book and the Ideal Maternity Home open from the late ‘20s to mid ‘40s.
The movie is partial fact mixed with fiction as an expecting couple takes a weekend retreat to an old-fashioned bed and breakfast getaway where they immediately encounter the creepy groundskeeper and the too nice and polite to not be dangerous innkeeper.
Shot in Windsor and Elmsdale Nova Scotia, winner of 10 best feature awards, The Child Remains could give reason to leave the nightlight on. As filming locations Briarwood Bed and Breakfast in Elmsdale and The Clockmakers Inn in Windsor, Nova Scotia are reportedly haunted.
The film starts off feeling a bit cliched, as a couple going to a remote empty house next to a forest isn’t exactly a fresh idea, however by the end, the story will stick in your head like a well-placed recurring bad dream. Violating your mind and emotions like the archaic tools found in the shed. Starting slow, like seeping cold boney hands, the movie prickles the eyes and ears with psychological fingertips.
There’s familiar horror movie territory like children’s voices, laughter and creepy toys. As well as the slow build of claustrophobia, suspense, melancholy and unease. While the wooden doll in the music room’s creepy, it doesn’t quite have the Annabelle effect but by the end, doesn’t need to.
Rae (Suzanne Clément), the expecting mother is a crime scene investigation journalist, suffering from post-traumatic visions and flashbacks triggered by certain sensitivities as the weekend becomes a three-day working vacation. Liam (Allan Hawco) is a struggling musician with secrets.
Early on the camera roves as both silent predator and creepy observer, though it’s a little unintentionally shaky in some scenes. There’s some great awkward, tensive scenes between Rae and Monica (Shelley Thompson) in the early goings.
One of the movies surprising strengths is the virtual void of humor or comic relief though the depth of narrative pulls you in with it’s well-crafted, uncovering of secrets and progressing doom, you don’t really notice. The mood gets deeper and dank as vintage silence and creepy acting are special effects in themselves, like a modern day Burnt Offerings. Proving what can be done with suspense, sound, mood and story with limited effects.
Though a library scene where Rae researchers the house and family’s history felt somewhat obligatory, the dead pan librarian was almost unintentionally funny.
The movie is blunt and brutal telling a fascinating but morbid story.
Jump scares are few as the film makes brilliant use of old-fashioned spooky atmosphere like The Conjuring movies. Scenes of Liam staring at the ghost box can’t help but flashback scenes of The Amityville Horror (2015) and Rae’s visit past the barbed wire, inspires moments of Blair Witch, Pet Sematary and The Evil Dead. There’s even a scene shot as a jump scare without the sounds, which makes it more effective.
Like cold death and dark earth, The Child Remains spreads itself like an unforgiving body bag silencing screams with its supernatural, dark ghost story, even playing the (family secret) Bathory blood card.
The end brings moments of insidiousness with Melski’s own piece of American Gothic.
It’s a mind twisting mental cage match of psyche rattling sanity dripping away like candlelight delivering a stand-alone story regardless if the viewer has knowledge of the true events.
