Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product details
|
Reviews
Directed and co-written by Daniel Myrick (The Blair Witch Project), Solstice follows a group of high school friends on their summer vacation to a lake house, deep in the damp swamps of Louisiana. Soon, things take a tragic turn for the worse when Megan (Elisabeth Harnois) realises that her dead twin sister is trying to contact her from beyond the grave. Also starring Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), Tyler Hoechlin (7th Heaven), Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!), R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket, Seven) and Matt O'Leary (Brick), the summer solstice is no longer just a day on the calendar, but a time when the boundary between our world and the spirit realm is at it's thinnest.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The term run-of-the-mill was coined for this type of film. A film with no real inventiveness, one that has very little to add to the genre, but which expounds on all the familiar clichés.
It tries, but there in lies the problem. It tries to be too many different things- horror, teen road movie, drama, comedy and the end result is mixed at best. That's not to say it isn't well made or very badly acted, it's neither, but it's just so tediously average and not successful enough with its scare-tactics, or lack there of.
Only if the following things scare you will this film do its job as a horror flick...
Teddy bear key rings
Boxes falling over by themselves
Bad dye jobs
Tree branches swaying in the wind
For a film that's billed primarily as a horror movie it's surprisingly gentle. Granted, the score has all the necessary violin shrieks in all the right places, there's gore (in moderation), there's the array of stock characters (the naïve one, the funny one, the promiscuous one, the creepy one), but there really isn't a great deal of tension cranked up throughout the course of the film and the pay-off is banal to say the least.
'Solstice' also suffers from an incoherent horror premise, one that's based on one of the biggest clichés in movie history- the dead twin. There's only ever going to be one outcome where a twin is concerned, so in waiting for that to happen I found myself irritated rather than intrigued.
It tries, but there in lies the problem. It tries to be too many different things- horror, teen road movie, drama, comedy and the end result is mixed at best. That's not to say it isn't well made or very badly acted, it's neither, but it's just so tediously average and not successful enough with its scare-tactics, or lack there of.
Only if the following things scare you will this film do its job as a horror flick...
Teddy bear key rings
Boxes falling over by themselves
Bad dye jobs
Tree branches swaying in the wind
For a film that's billed primarily as a horror movie it's surprisingly gentle. Granted, the score has all the necessary violin shrieks in all the right places, there's gore (in moderation), there's the array of stock characters (the naïve one, the funny one, the promiscuous one, the creepy one), but there really isn't a great deal of tension cranked up throughout the course of the film and the pay-off is banal to say the least.
'Solstice' also suffers from an incoherent horror premise, one that's based on one of the biggest clichés in movie history- the dead twin. There's only ever going to be one outcome where a twin is concerned, so in waiting for that to happen I found myself irritated rather than intrigued.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The beginning of this film has many things that we have seen so many times in the past and yet there seems to be hardly any attempt to inject even an ounce of originality into the mix. Essentially what we have are stupid stereotypical teenagers, doing stupid stereotypical things.
The brief story is: Kids go on trip to creepy countryside area and think they see a ghost.
The filmmakers even have the kids using the word 'dude'. It's almost like every element of this movie was pinched from the 1980s.
The problem when you fill a film with so many ideas that have been used in famous movies of the past, is that only the most inexperienced and naive of film watchers won't be able to guess what is about to happen next.
Amongst many cliches there are spurting gunky taps, creepy corridor music, a dark old house and its creepy local (played by Lee Ermey), a tiresome girl wandering around outside in the middle of the night to see what the strange noise was and the group of young friends who never believe each other when something wrong or spooky happens.
All of the above made up about 90% of all horror films between 1971 - 1989.
These young fools also decide to stick around despite the mysterious ghostly prints on photos and windows and seeing random incarnations of a dead relative.
On the upside there are three or four reasonably subtle special effect shots that may provoke a shiver or two but these are fleeting and certainly not worth wading through the whole movie for. Also having Lee Ermey show up for a couple of scenes promised so much more than you'd expect given his previous stunning turn as one of the baddies in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.
It's not that Solstice is technically a bad film, it's just that the story is so unoriginal and has been done far better in far more effective, interesting and enjoyable ways many many times in the past.
The brief story is: Kids go on trip to creepy countryside area and think they see a ghost.
The filmmakers even have the kids using the word 'dude'. It's almost like every element of this movie was pinched from the 1980s.
The problem when you fill a film with so many ideas that have been used in famous movies of the past, is that only the most inexperienced and naive of film watchers won't be able to guess what is about to happen next.
Amongst many cliches there are spurting gunky taps, creepy corridor music, a dark old house and its creepy local (played by Lee Ermey), a tiresome girl wandering around outside in the middle of the night to see what the strange noise was and the group of young friends who never believe each other when something wrong or spooky happens.
All of the above made up about 90% of all horror films between 1971 - 1989.
These young fools also decide to stick around despite the mysterious ghostly prints on photos and windows and seeing random incarnations of a dead relative.
On the upside there are three or four reasonably subtle special effect shots that may provoke a shiver or two but these are fleeting and certainly not worth wading through the whole movie for. Also having Lee Ermey show up for a couple of scenes promised so much more than you'd expect given his previous stunning turn as one of the baddies in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.
It's not that Solstice is technically a bad film, it's just that the story is so unoriginal and has been done far better in far more effective, interesting and enjoyable ways many many times in the past.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Megan and her friends, Christian, Zoe, Mark and Alicia head to her old family home in Nowell Lake to celebrate the Summer Solstice. The only problem is that Megan is still haunted by the suicide of her twin sister Sofie six months earlier. While shopping at a supply store on the way to the house, Megan befriends Nick who gives her a magazine telling her about communicating with the dead during the Solstice. Whilst in the house, Megan is haunted by what she believes to be the ghost of Sofie which is symbolised by a key chain that Sofie had the night of her death. While investigating the mystery hauntings, she starts to become suspicious of Nick and after finding a photograph of a missing girl named Malin, she starts to unravel an even darker secret that may hold the key to her sisters death. Throughout the film we are given flashbacks of the events leading up to the suicide of Sofie. We are taught that it's not just a girls way of getting out of a tough spot, Sofie is haunted by a curse which she desperately wants to get away from. This ultimately causes her to take a drastic decision that will effect Megan for the months to come.
Now being a straight to DVD movie I didn't expect much, I expected it to be filled with clichés and to be actually, not that scary. I was wrong as this was a film that a lot of the time gave me the creeps. I expected it in some ways to be very in your face with the hauntings from the beginning. It was nothing of the sort as it paced itself well, it didn't seem to want to be a cliché movie where the girl thinks she's going crazy and so does everyone else until they die or something ridiculous like that. It didn't rush it, it didn't treat the viewer like a child with the attention span of a sparrow. It paced the hauntings and built them up brilliantly until the climax.
The cast is strong with the biggest star in it possibly being Shawn Ashmore of X-Men fame. The acting is both solid and believable and the actors manage to draw you into the situation and make you a part of the situation. Elisabeth Harnois during the "six months earlier" scenes is forced to play both Megan and Sofie, which is a true test of acting ability. She does it well and the conversations and interactions between the two seem un-faltered.
I enjoyed the film and I know a lot of horror fans will too. It's not for the faint hearted as it has its genuinely frightening parts. Buy it and enjoy it, you wont be disappointed. I only wish that more straight to DVD movies were as good as this.
Now being a straight to DVD movie I didn't expect much, I expected it to be filled with clichés and to be actually, not that scary. I was wrong as this was a film that a lot of the time gave me the creeps. I expected it in some ways to be very in your face with the hauntings from the beginning. It was nothing of the sort as it paced itself well, it didn't seem to want to be a cliché movie where the girl thinks she's going crazy and so does everyone else until they die or something ridiculous like that. It didn't rush it, it didn't treat the viewer like a child with the attention span of a sparrow. It paced the hauntings and built them up brilliantly until the climax.
The cast is strong with the biggest star in it possibly being Shawn Ashmore of X-Men fame. The acting is both solid and believable and the actors manage to draw you into the situation and make you a part of the situation. Elisabeth Harnois during the "six months earlier" scenes is forced to play both Megan and Sofie, which is a true test of acting ability. She does it well and the conversations and interactions between the two seem un-faltered.
I enjoyed the film and I know a lot of horror fans will too. It's not for the faint hearted as it has its genuinely frightening parts. Buy it and enjoy it, you wont be disappointed. I only wish that more straight to DVD movies were as good as this.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Slow but watchable
The film got off to a very slow start but did eventually pick up the pace a bit. Not particularly scary but watchable
Published 17 months ago by RM Brown
Mm.. haunted teddy bear key rings??
Most of these reviews are way too high. Bought this DVD with modest expectations - so as not to be too dissapointed.... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Golding
Average teen flick
In a nutshell: take two goofy boys and three hot girls, drop them off in a remote holiday home - so far, so `Evil Dead' - add a pinch of `Christine' (or, um, `Herbie'... Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2010 by International Cowgirl
Think One Tree Hill. But with a corpse hanging from that one tree.
At first I thought this was going to be a standard tween slasher flick. Sadly its not even that good. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2009 by C. Verspeak
No real scares, some minor chills
Directed by one half of the one-hit-wonder Blair Witch Project team who have been stuck in straight-to-video Hell ever since, Daniel Myrick's Solstice turns out to be a better than... Read more
Published on 8 Dec 2008 by Trevor Willsmer
Run of the Mill
The first hour or so of this film is very slow moving and tedious, in fact I came very close to giving up on it, but I did persist and the pace and interest levels improve after... Read more
Published on 1 Dec 2008 by Dr. W. E. Allen
...Nno! Don't go into the swamps!...too late...
Hmm, well I suppose I got what I expected from director Daniel Myrick (The Blair Withch Project), and all the non-famous actors from movies like X-Men and Mean Girls. Read more
Published on 21 Nov 2008 by Mr. H
Scary Movie
I didn't know much about this movie when I started watching it. Being a veteran of the Friday The 13th films (I've seen them all) and the Halloween, Exorcist, Omen & Nightmare On... Read more
Published on 9 Nov 2008 by G. M. Dobb
Missed Opportunity
What happened with this film...well not much happened in it....but I'm talking about the potential that was wasted when filming it. Read more
Published on 6 Nov 2008 by M. R. Jones
Effective Chiller
Five high school leavers head off to spent summer solstice in a house in the bayou. After dispensing with the usual cliches (Local old man who stares), the kids get down some... Read more
Published on 30 Oct 2008 by The Soft Machine Operator
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
