Assorted Enthrallments

I watched a flick on Saturday night, June 28, 2008, called Solstice — another horror movie that I had never heard of but decided to take a chance on — because of the filmmaker, in this case. I might not have considered this flick if not for its director, Dan Myrick, who was one-half of the Blair Witch Project team. I think even the toughest critic would have to give Blair Witch Project high marks, at least for its originality.

I found this movie to be quite watchable from the start for a couple of reasons. It has a high quality feel to it in that the acting is good; it’s big-budget acting. Many of these
horror flicks I take a chance on end up having mediocre acting at best, especially those movies I’ve never even heard of; not this one. It reeked of quality from the start.

Horror-wise, it is mild. There is no gore and there are not really even any shockers; however, it was creepy enough.

The main actress – Elisabeth Harnios — I’d never seen or heard of, but she sure is a beautiful girl. The main male actor I have seen as Iceman in X-Men.

Solstice reviews are mixed…

Solstice Review: Best-Horror-Movies.com

Immediately upon arriving at the summer house Megan has the strange feeling that her sister Sophie’s spirit is watching. She is also haunted by a keychain that seems to follow her around and a growing obsession with the disappearance of a local girl months earlier. The introduction of local boy Nick (Tyler Hoechlin) adds voodoo and communicating with the dead to the equation, and Megan’s dreams of a muddy death threaten to drive her insane.

The story and performances in this film are believable and genuine, making the film interesting enough to keep your attention to the bitter end. The plot twists and turns work well right up to the shocking conclusion.

There are a few elements notably missing in Solstice, namely scares and suspense. Clearly this was the point – that these things aren’t necessary, but ultimately a convincing argument could be made that this is not a horror movie at all, but rather a ghostly drama/thriller.

Solstice Review: Horror-movie-a-day.blogspot.com

The cast is decent enough, acting-wise, but they are all bred from the same bland WB stock you have come to expect from these sort of movies (indeed, many of them are known primarily for One Tree Hill, 7th Heaven, etc). And whoever cast it should have been laughed out of the room for suggesting that these two could pass for the same age.

The guy playing the main girl’s (who looks like the offspring of Michelle Trachtenberg and Rachel Nichols. Mmm.) boyfriend is either Jimmy Olson from Smallville or Iceman from the X-men movies, not sure. Don’t care either. The only actor of real note is R. Lee Ermey, who looks almost angry to be there in his 5 minutes of screentime (at least they were honest enough not to make a big deal about his appearance on the cover).

The main problem with the film is that there are scarcely any horror elements in it. It’s one thing to build character and flesh out the back-story, but it’s another for the film to go so long without any sort of suspense or scares that you forget what kind of movie you were watching. I swear to God, at one point I thought to myself “I hope I have time to watch a horror movie today” during my viewing of this film. The only reason I remembered that I WASN’T just watching a teen soap was because the film was, for some reason, shot in scope widescreen.

The commentary is slightly more entertaining, mainly because Myrick is an intelligent adult, so I felt less dumb listening to him than the characters in the film (one of whom claims to have once wiped his ass with a potato chip, which doesn’t even seem possible). But there’s a lot of silence, and Myrick frequently simply narrates the on-screen action, leaving little worth to the track as a whole. And sadly, Blair isn’t even mentioned, nor does he provide any information why the director of one of the most successful horror movies of all time took like 8 years off and is now directing this sort of teen crap. He also seems to be confused as to how long his film is, claiming it’s over 100 minutes when it is only 91.