They Remain is a 2018 thriller about two scientists who share a romantic history tasked with investigating unnatural animal behavior on the site of a Manson Family-style cult’s compound.
Based on the 2010 short story, “-30-” by award-winning author Laird Barron, They Remain follows two scientists, Keith (William Jackson Harper) and Jessica (Rebecca Henderson), who are sent out by a huge corporation to investigate abnormal animal behaviors occurring in a previous remote area that had some horrible killings happen in the past. Their mission has a month in duration and they are offered high tech surveillance material and a lab to research initial findings. With Keith as their boy scout who goes on according to schedule every day in different districts they’ve established to observe and Jessica to stay back at the camp to do any analysis, the dynamic and relationship of these two people start to evolve over the next days we follow their progress.
They Remain starts off on the right foot, with most everything centered on the action, just like Keith’s surveillance system and schedule. Things work well in a “no news is good news” sort of deal. We literally watch a lot of walking around and checking surveillance cameras with Jessica moving around in the lab working on this and that, talking about trust and human relationships and leaked information about what happened in this area years ago and what this mission means for each of them. Like many indie films, the scale is small so we get to learn about Keith and Jessica as they are primarily the only two people in this film … with a small cameo by one other person. Harper and Henderson both do a great job, delivering good performances with what they are given.
Much like any recent indie films, They Remain is a slow-paced film that starts off with a very mysterious location and a history set in open nature. It gives us time to know the two leads and their relationship while sprinkling some findings throughout related to animal behavior such as a dog, which seems made a reference to a wolf at one point and abnormal wasps and ant activities. They make great use of this material and setting and has solid cinematography. However, all of the beautiful visuals are paired up with an off-putting and creepy background score that genuinely creates an eerie atmosphere, along with plenty of expected horror imagery.
There is a lot of potential but where it falls apart is its script, rendering it far too predictable. The first few times the score comes up it helps, but as the film goes on, the slow-pace and Keith and Jessica’s relationship all make for a fairly flat experience. What does make it more suspenseful is the distortion of reality and illusion that lies in the central question of what is going on. Keith will keep seeing these different sequences that amp up in intensity and then get cut back to what we would expect is reality and it brings in the question of whether it is actually real or merely nightmares. The suspense is present but sadly, there’s no payoff for the build-up and a not so surprising twist ending.
Available On Demand and Special Edition Blu-ray Tuesday, May 29 (US & CANADA)