Movie review: The Time that Remains (2025)
Summary
The Time that Remains (2025) is a Filipino vampire romance movie released in Netflix this October 16, just in time for this Halloween season. It stars Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Carlo Aquino, Bing Pimentel, Beauty Gonzales, and Bembol Roco.
What I liked, what I hated
Set in Baguio, the film starts with an elderly lady (Bing Pimentel) dancing alone in a living room of her old house, as if reminiscing of good old days. A sudden gunshot wound sends her to a hospital. Lilia is accompanied by a younger looking man who she calls Matias (Carlo Aquino), whom she calls her ‘boyfriend’, to the amusement of the nurse attending to her.
As she tells her story to the nurse Isabel (Beauty Gonzales) the story returns to her past, how she met Matias during the Japanese occupation and the hardships she faced growing up. In the present, Isabel has her own problem, a deadbeat ex-boyfriend (Mark Herras) who keeps stalking her.
Then, one of the local police played by Bembol Roco realize that Lilia and Matias have been involved in some unsolved murder cases throughout the years. He notices that in the photos, Lilia ages but Matias still looks the same. He warns Isabel not to trust the two of them, and suspects that the couple had something to do with the suspicious deaths.
Later, we learn that Matias is a ‘creature of the night’ and is Lilia’s lover. As Lilia approaches death, and Matias is an immortal, the question remains - how can their love survive?
Conclusion: Is it worth watching?
I was interested in the movie because of the premise. However, twenty minutes into the movie, I just can’t get into it. It was a drag and I felt that Jasmine and Carlo had no chemistry at all. Their relationship was also too fast, from her childhood to her being a young woman. We weren’t really shown how their relationship developed. Them meeting when she was a child raises so many questions too - was she groomed by Matias? How was their relationship while she was growing up and how did they become lovers, exactly? It’s like they met when she was a girl, then he protects her, then boom they’re naked in a bathtub and staring at each other’s eyes in bed. But even then it felt hollow and unexciting.
And they ‘showed’ their love by awkward slow dancing in the corner of the room and it just looked weird. I didn’t feel anything romantic from the actor at all, and his acting was more staring intently into people and things and he didn’t feel otherworldly or scary at all the way I imagine a vampire to be.
The plot got a little bit more interesting when Matias’ backstory was shown and how he was turned into a vampire. Spoiler: He was once part of an indigenous tribe that was devastated during the Spanish occupation. Christine Reyes also plays a vampire acquaintance of Matias, and would have been a much more interesting character but there wasn’t much to her anyway.
I also felt very irritated by Lilia’s character. She had a lot of potential as a character. I wish we could’ve had more of her struggle with her love for Matias and the darker sides of herself (she did express some joy when Matias harms people who harms her), and the conservative society she was brought up in. I like the parts where rumors started about her - that she’s a witch, has a demon companion, but later tries to live a normal life. She even gets married at some point. But I couldn’t find myself connecting to her.
Even the character of Isabel also wasn’t that interesting. So, she plans to work in another country and her ex tries to stop her. She serves as a plot point to let us know about Lilia’s story but other than that she’s just so boring.
The script and dialogue also felt too lackluster and tries to be deep and poetic but didn’t really make me feel anything because the characters felt so empty. The murder mystery, investigation subplot was also not that exciting. I wasn’t that much invested in it. I was watching with others and the script felt too chatgpt, if you know what I mean. There was a scene where the police was pulling out old articles about Lilia from the 1970s and the article and headings felt too AI-ish.
I’m currently reading Dracula (pretty much the standard of vampire stories, that all future vampire stories will always be compared to). The last vampire movie I watched was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and that set the standard too high for a vampire movie for me. Maybe I should rewatch that instead and write a review of it.
Though I do give the movie credit on its setting and eerie atmosphere. It tried to capture that gothic setting of the genre.
Overall, The Time that Remains could have been something good - but the premise wasn’t held up by the uninteresting script, empty characters, poor development, and dullness. There are certainly other, better movies to watch for Halloween. This is just not worth it.
My Rating:
1/5
