Solstice

SOLSTICE couldn't get anymore ordinary if it tried. It's a tale which sees a group of twentysomething friends traveling into the sticks to celebrate the summer solstice. One of the group is tormented by her sister's suicide from years before, so when she begins to experience strange supernatural events at the house they're staying at, she thinks her sister's ghost is trying to communicate. Of course, it's not her sister's ghost at all, but something far more sinister as a back story is gradually revealed to viewers. Unfortunately SOLSTICE for the most part is uninteresting, because the events that play out are so darned familiar. There are taps that run mud and CGI ghosts hanging about behind people, and it's all well telegraphed so that there's nary a surprising moment. The genre is still stuck with old AMITYVILLE HORROR-type tropes even in this day and age. Even the incessant long-haired ghosts of the J-horror genre are scarier than this. The real surprise is that BLAIR WITCH director Daniel Myrick would make such an ordinary and forgettable film. There are a few familiar faces here - genre regular Shawn Ashmore (FROZEN), who's always a pleasure; the great R. Lee Ermey in a minor "hillbilly" role; a pre-stardom Amanda Seyfried - but the lamentable scare scenes and the oddly uninvolving denouement combine to make this a bore.

I first watched this movie when i bought it a couple of months back and i was excited to see that is rated PG-13, which told me that its not going to be a gore flick with a lot of horror violence, but a creepy teenage thriller. It is spooky and harrowing. Im a huge horror buff, but I occasionally like some non violent and supernatural flicks. Solstice featured a spooky story line and a great teenage cast, including Elisabeth Harnois(90210 and One Tree Hill), Shawn Ashmore(The Ruins), Hilarie Burton(One Tree Hill and The Secret Life of Bees), Amanda Seyfried(Alpha Dog, Mean Girls and the Upcoming 2009 Teenage Horror Flick Jennifer's Body), Matt O'Leary(Death Sentence and 2009's Sorority Row) and Tyler Hoechlin(Grizzly Rage and 7th Heaven). This flick has all of the horror elements, like a group of friends celebrating at a house in the wilderness and then being terrorized by a masked killer, only this one has a supernatural twist to it. A group of close friends decide to spend the weekend at a friends family's home deep in the wilderness to celebrate their graduation, only to be caught up in a series of supernatural occurrences and an ancient voodoo ceremony, that places the friends in mortal danger. They must discover the dark secret that binds them together and the recent death of their friend. This movie terrified me and I definitely recommend it!!

When I watched this movie, I was struck by how bland, boring, and predictable it was. It was never actually bad or anything, but it was arguably memorable for being so forgettable. It was only after I came to the IMDb that I discovered it was directed by one of the guys responsible for that utter borefest, The Blair Witch Project. At that moment, everything made sense to me, and I felt totally vindicated in my intense dislike for TBWP (which all my friends, at the time, seemed to think was pure genius). I also realized that this director had done The Believers, which was, unsurprisingly, a bit of a borefest, though the ending was kind of cool (even though it was stolen from a Arthur C. Clarke story). Unfortunately, this movie doesn't really have an interesting twist to save it, unless you're really, really unfamiliar with the last 50 years worth of ghost stories coming out of Hollywood. Eduardo Sanchez, the co-director of TBWP, made a pretty good movie a few years ago, called Altered, about a group of friends who have a really nasty series of run-ins with malevolent aliens. Unlike this one, I walked in to that movie thinking it was going to be crap, but I was quite surprised at how much I liked it. It was suspenseful, gory, and, while it wasn't really original, it still managed to put its own spin on a common theme (alien abduction). Really, it was more a movie about rape than anything else, couched in science fiction/horror elements. This movie? It's exactly what it looks like -- a group of stupid teenagers (played by 30 year old actors, of course), including a depressed girl, the depressed girl's best friend, an insensitive jerk, the insensitive jerk's long-suffering girlfriend, and the depressed girl's love interest (who also happens to be her dead twin sister's ex-boyfriend), spend about 70 minutes getting drunk, followed by about 15-20 minutes of plot, wherein they follow the psychic intuitions of the depressed girl, only to solve a Scooby Doo mystery. Unfortunately, this movie has all the thrills, mystery, and suspense of your average Scooby Doo episode, perhaps due to the PG rating. Amusingly, the ghosts ended up just standing around, in the background, looking as bored as I felt, while I was watching this movie. Prepare to be bored to death, rather than scared to death.

This movie is what you get when you try to stretch a paragraphs' worth of plot and about two sentences' worth of characterization into a hour-and-a-half story. This ghostly tale is equal parts dumb and boring and the few cheap scares it musters up can't compete with a plethora of astoundingly contrived scenes and a near total lack of recognizable human behavior. 6 months after her twin sister committed suicide, Megan (Elisabeth Harnois) and her 4 friends head out to a big house in the Louisiana swamps to celebrate the Summer Solstice before heading off to college in the fall. While she's there, Megan is tormented by frightening visions that revolve around a teddy bear key chain her sister always carried around. What looks like the girl from the well in The Ring movies also shows up a couple of times. After boinking her dead sister's ex-boyfriend and making goo goo eyes at a handsome local who knows a little cajun voodoo, Megan finally discovers the reason she's being haunted and how it's connected to a creepy redneck who lives across the lake. From teenagers putting on suits and ties to hold a dinner party to a huge house in the swamp that's perfectly maintained without a caretaker, from a plot twist that makes you want to throw something at the screen to one of Megan's friends looking like a preppie who escaped from a 1980s sex comedy (including wearing a polo shirt with an upturned collar), there's nothing about this film that makes sense or resembles anything like reality. These filmmakers took a very old and very clichéd ghost story that everyone's heard before and just started stapling stupid stuff onto it. There are 7 characters in the story, yet they don't even have one personality among them. The film throws a few dream sequences at the audience but never defines exactly when they begin. So when the dream sequences end, you're not sure what actually happened and what was the dream. There's a series of flashbacks to the night Megan's sister killed herself, but there's no connection between what's going on in the story and when we see the flashbacks. It's not like something happens that makes Megan or someone else remember that night. The flashbacks are just inserted into the film, like little bathroom breaks for the viewer. You certainly can take a whiz anytime a flashback happens, because none of them contribute anything to the story. If its cast of attractive young people had at least gotten naked a few times, Solstice might have been almost tolerable. If R. Lee Ermey had gone the full monty, it might have become horrifically irresistible. As it is, Solstice is just another PG-13 horror flick where the only horrifying thing about it is that I paid money to watch this piece of crap.

Watching Solstice is a bit like platting fog ! yes there is a storyline and maybe the writers are aiming at a student/ teen cult market, but I don't think this film quite hits it. It is like an old 70's / 80's movie. I don't think solstice will be cult or stand the test of time. I was not a big fan of Blair Witch but I could see the appeal and would give that a good rating. If they thought they would capture the same audience they may. Only once I think. Not being the first to slate this movie I feel confident that my opinion is valid. Solstice is weak. You really have to draw your imagination into wanting to be on the edge of your seat with this one. The actors are all good its just the poor movie.

This is an effective little thriller in that you never truly know what has happened until the last 10 minutes of the movie. Megan, grieving over the death of her twin sister, visits the family summer home with a group of her friends, including her sister's ex-boyfriend. Haunted by the past, she has a series of visions. She is also creeped out by an old vagrant, played by R. Lee Ermy, who can't seem to get jobs playing psychotic Drill Sergeants anymore, so he's getting jobs as psychotic hillbillies. The movie drags in places, but it still very suspenseful, and the ending is pretty awesome.

Well, those are the words that come to my mind when I think of Solstice. How many times before a story following that same sort of plot has been told ? Zillions! Why ghost stories only know how to tell one type of story: Mysterious things happen. A particular person start to see and feel odd things. Is it a message from the "other side"? Nobody believes anything this particular person says. Then in the end of the movie the whole thing becomes clear after one or two plot twists. The body of the wandering ghost is found and then she/he can rest in peace, and justice is made finally. Solstice has a nice production, but that is it. The story sucks. It is weak, deja-vu all over again.

I'm very surprised that it's NOT mentioned that Solstice is a remake of "Midsommer"(a Norwegian/Swedish, horror/drama/thriller, from 2003) I've seen both movies and the plot is almost identical. Of course the details is somewhat different, but overall, it is most definitely the same story. The Norwegian/Swedish story (being the original), IS better (also it made the theaters). Solstice offered no surprises and parts of the story was really to convenient (thinking specially of one of the characters, if you see the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about). If you haven't seen "Midsommer", then I recommend you to see it first (if you can) before "Solstice".

Well, Solstice gets a high-five for good casting, visuals, sound and overall atmosphere. Only problem is the story. It's the same type of ghost story a proper horror fan has seen a gazillion times. And it's a remake! Why? Also, at 87 minutes, this felt like hours. Bo-ring. There are red herrings, scary shadows, MTV-style flashbacks from the dead, and while it's all well done, it's all been done before. Thank you, but no. Myrick had a mediocre movie (Believers, also (V)) and a good one ruined by a terribly miscast main actor and a "gotcha-sucker!" ending (The Objective). At least here, justice was served and this went straight to DVD where it belongs. Eduardo Sanchez' "Altered", although more of a sci-fi horror hybrid on a low budget, is superior to all of the above mentioned films in my opinion. Here's hoping that Myrick (who has loads of talent) will make a proper great movie in the future. 5/10

From the writer/director of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT Daniel Myrick, who spins a tale influenced by a Scandinavian thriller MIDSUMMER. SOLSTICE is a haunting yarn about a group of high school friends getting together for one last blow out before heading to college. Less than a year after losing her twin sister to suicide, Megan(Elisabeth Harnois)joins her friends on a trip to the family summer home on the Louisiana bayou. Things get real bizarre when Megan thinks she is being contacted by her sister from beyond the grave. A local hunk(Tyler Hoechlin)comes to dinner and teaches the group a Creole spell of the summer solstice. They actually try and raise Megan's sister from the dead...not without casualties. Flashbacks tend to disjoint the whole story and gets tiresome quickly. Also in the cast: Shawn Ashmore, Hilarie Burton, R. Lee Ermey and Matt O'Leary.