Remainder

Stars: Tom Sturridge, Cush Jumbo, Ed Speleers, Arsher Ali, Adrian Schiller, Andrew Havill

Director: Omer Fast

A psychological 'thriller' that's truly weird, but never uses its strangeness to its own, or our advantage.

Director Fast belies his name by setting a very slow pace, as we're introduced to Tom (Sturridge), who runs into a pedestrian precinct, leaving a wheelie suitcase on the pavement, only to be struck by an object descending from the glass roof above (the origin of this, like everything else in the film, is far from clear).

Brought back from the brink of death, he encounters a girl (Jumbo, late of TV's Vera, with a bogus American accent) who, like other characters, may be in the past or the present,

Awarded £8,500,000 in compensation, Tom, suffering from memory loss, proceeds to reconstruct his last life, even hiring actors to play the characters from the house in which he lived, forcing locals to keep going to a specified telephone box and building a 'bank' set, the exact replica of a robbery that seems to have played a part in his life.

You wouldn't think that even eight and a half million would cover all the reconstructions of things he half remembers, not to mention all the actors that have to be hired, but then nothing here makes any sense, not even when you look back on it.

Formless and shapeless, the story is never believable or compelling at any stage, going nowhere except in an unresolved circle before vanishing up its own pretensions. Worst film of the year so far.

David Quinlan

UK/Germany 2015. UK Distributor: Soda. Colour (unspecified).
102 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 3.

Review date: 19 Jun 2016