Any film that opens on a title card bearing a quote from HP Lovecraft is guaranteed to get horror fans sitting up and taking notice. Whether the subsequent hour and a half of They Remain will keep them in that upright, attentive position is another matter. Writer-director Philip Gelatt’s film strives to give us an intimate, grounded, character-driven take on your classic descent into madness tale. The end result certainly isn’t a failure, but it’s sadly nowhere near as arresting as we might like.
Based on the Laird Barron short story ‘-30-,’ They Remain centres on Keith (William Jackson Harper) and Jessica (Rebecca Henderson), a pair of scientists in the employ of some unknown corporation, who are setting up camp in fancy looking geodesic tents in a large open field near some woodland. Their job, it seems, is to study the natural wilderness and wildlife activity for several months, in total isolation, with no days off. While the reasons for this study are not entirely clear at first, it comes to light that the site was in some time past home to a religious cult who apparently went insane and slaughtered one another. It seems Keith and Jessica are there to determine whether there might be some kind of scientific reason for the region itself to trigger such activity. Small wonder, then, that after a great length of time out there with no company but one another, Keith and Jessica find their own sanity sorely tested.
They Remain plays its hand pretty early on. What we have here is a two-hander drama with minimal dialogue and exposition, which places greater emphasis on mood than plot, and gradually descends deeper into weirdness until a dark final act which leaves things very much open to interpretation. The Shining in a tent, essentially. None of this is necessarily a bad thing, so long as what little we are told is enough to fire the imagination, and there’s sufficient chemistry between the actors.
Unfortunately, it’s rather debatable as to how well They Remain stands up on those counts. Harper, most recognisable for his role on TV comedy The Good Place (viewers may be surprised to hear him actually saying “fuck” rather than “fork”), is certainly a charismatic leading man, exuding world-weary cynicism and fortitude that is gradually chipped away as things go south. Henderson, however, feels a little lifeless by comparison, although I can see that this may have been intentional; the two are meant to be mismatched, with an awkward relationship, and this does come off well early on. However, the film never fully succeeds in amping up the tension that we’re supposed to believe is building between them; particularly once this tension takes on a sexual bent, which rather feels like it comes out of nowhere.
I think the key problem is that the film’s underlying supernatural threat is just too vague, and overly familiar. As soon as we know that a bunch of people went crazy and killed one another there, it’s no great stretch to guess where things are headed; they almost could have just gone with the old ‘Indian burial ground’ macguffin. While the quieter, dialogue-based scenes are for the most part well-handled, the trippier sequences – replete with flashbacks to topless cult members cavorting in the woods – just feel a bit cliched and obvious, and fail to add up to something suitably interesting. Worse yet, it never succeeds in building genuine tension.
If nothing, They Remain should serve as a decent calling card for Harper, demonstrating that he’s got the makings of a versatile movie star. Beyond this, though, it’s a largely forgettable viewing experience which really doesn’t add anything new to the realm of weird/Lovecraftian horror on screen.
They Remain opens in New York from March 2nd and Los Angeles from March 9th, with a national US release to follow.