Two scientists who share a romantic history are tasked with investigating unnatural animal behaviour on the site of a Manson Family-style cult’s compound.

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Keith and Jessica are two researchers heli-dropped into a clearing in the middle of the woods to do a months-long research project regarding abnormalities amongst the local fauna. There is immediate tension between them from the start of the movie as they set up operations, and we quickly learn that they had a previous relationship. Did it end badly? Did one ghost the other? Details are sketchy.

Keith (William Jackson Harper) is the one mainly going out into the woods and collecting information, while Jessica (Rebecca Henderson) usually stays behind to analyze and monitor the many cameras they set up around the area.  The weirdness settles in early, and appears to center around Jessica at first: she admits that she heard someone knocking on her door the previous evening and accuses Keith of trying to scare her; someone whispered her name out in the woods; she also relates a story of her putting her hand in a wasp (I think) nest, but all they did was crawl all over her hand. No stings.

And then there are the hallucinations. Or are they flashbacks? Dream visions?  We start piecing together the activities of the cult that used these woods from little flashes of images that come to our doomed couple: nudity, and chanting, and giggling, a charismatic leader, and blood. So much blood.

I haven’t even mentioned the wolf that just stands and watches Keith. Or the three-foot-tall ram’s horn that seems to weirdly effect all who touch it. Or the night vision footage that reveals even more hidden terrors.

Am I being too vague? I feel I have to be in order to keep the integrity of the film intact. This movie would like your full attention, and will reward you for your patience, not with a frenetic pounding gorefest, but with a creeping sense of doomed madness that drags us down and down.  Is it the woods causing the odd behavior ? Is it the leftover aura of the unknown cult? Are they feeding off each other? Many questions remain unanswered, and that just makes this whole thing creepier.

Director Philip Gelatt (The Bleeding House) relates these events with a cool, dispassionate, unemotional eye. We are mute witnesses, powerless against the rising tide of horror in this completely isolated area. Beautiful shots of Keith picking his way through the forest are tense all by themselves, as Gelatt frames him to seem a very small portion of the entire picture. One man against…all of that. And sometimes, all of that includes his partner, Jessica.

The Harper and Henderson as the two leads have a wonderful, natural presence, completely believable even as they necessarily have to throw out scientific jargon as well as mundane (but guarded?) banter. Man, I really wanted to know what went on between these two before this episode began, but, alas, ’twas not to be. We are left to speculate, about this and so many other things in They Remain. Even the title is creepy and unexplained. They Remain. Who is “they?” Why do they remain? Where? Even as the movie fades to black and the final, chilling line is uttered, we’re not sure of much. And, somehow, that’s worse than if we had a thorough explanation of things.

I really liked this movie. I’m still thinking of it, pondering its mysteries, puzzling over its shuddery , gorgeous visuals, and wanting to watch it again. I think your time would be well-spent in the middle of the forest, where they remain.  Uncle Mike says check it out.