Brandon Yu

The plot, as a result, can’t quite find its momentum; it doesn’t help that most of the film’s scares fall flat on a visual and technical level.

Most of the movie is told with big, rudimentary handwriting and slathered in clichés.

Losing all of the glee of its predecessor, the movie instead offers nearly three hours of convoluted story lines, undercooked themes and a tangle of confused, glaringly state-approved political subtext.

This film from Li Xiaofeng turns a crime soap opera into an allegory about the moral costs of rapacious expansion — to middling effect.

Like any rager gone south, the buzz is fun early on, until it’s suddenly too much, the house is overrun, and the room starts spinning.

Even as a Lifetime-esque soap, What Remains sputters, lacking any of the sensational twists to allow itself to sink into enjoyable pulp. The film ultimately hopes to position itself above such a story, aiming instead for a meditation on faith and forgiveness, but its writing and direction lacks the emotional substance to produce anything legitimately affecting.