Written and co-directed by James Denton (alongside Richard Oakes), Remembrance is a psychological thriller about a woman who has recently escaped from a kidnapping incident. At its core was a central twist that becomes integral to the path of the story.
Grace (Alyssa Haymor) has been kidnapped and is kept chained up in the basement of her assailant. One day she manages to pick the lock on her chains and escape her captivity, fleeing through woodland until she ends up at a nearby town and promptly falls into a week long coma. When she awakens she discovers she has amnesia and barely able to recall anything about her kidnapping, aside from that she was captive for about a week. Grace is then placed into witness protection in a remote rural house under the care of two detectives investigating her case, Amanda (Saffron Spearman) and Isaac (Denton). They hope that when her memory recovers she will be able to help them identify her kidnapper. As the two detectives investigate, Amanda begins to suspect Grace may be not telling the truth due to no evidence she had ever been kidnapped, while Isaac, ever empathetic, begins to get a little too close to the woman.
Split into four parts, this indie thriller does a lot with barely any characters. The disjointed and frantic editing during Grace's prologue escape, as well as her many confused recollections were wonderfully done. It was a neat choice to have her kidnapper literally be faceless in her flashbacks, representing her lost memory of what they looked like. It made those sections the most pure horror sections of the film. Over those four acts the story gets pieced together bit by bit and later sections focus more on Isaac. He was a fun character as he acted like the world's most unprofessional detective. His bad behaviour includes sleeping with his boss, smoking like a chimney at his work place, swearing and throwing things while around Grace, and taking far too much of a personal interest in the woman and her situation.
With the kidnapping confined to patchy flashbacks, the core story becomes much more restrained and peril-free, at least up until the genuinely thrilling finale. There are lots of scenes of characters sat around drinking coffee. I was indeed caught up in the mystery of what had happened, but the lack of many characters reduced the surprise when the culprit is finally discovered, as scene stealing a presence as they were. The twist was unexpected, but it didn't really excite me either, I did appreciate the way it played into the epilogue.
Make-up effects were good throughout, with Grace looking suitably bloody and beaten, and the few action scenes looked great on camera.
I did like Remembrance as simple as it was. Not a great film, but it was still solid, had a easy to like protagonist and most importantly, was a real distraction from the horrors of the real world for 90 minutes. Remembrance came to UK digital on 19th October from Reel2ReelFilms.
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