Solstice DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

The line above the title on the front cover might not have been the best way to market this movie: "From The Director of The Blair Witch Project." While you can't deny the film's theatrical success, the shock value wore off quick, and we rarely hear the names of Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, and even if we did, they always come with the reminder of that 1999 film that ushered them into their 15 minutes of fame. Solstice is only directed by Myrick, as it appears the duo have gone their separate ways, and while this isn't a great first step on the road to career recovery, it isn't that bad either.

To be completely honest, the ending really saved the movie. It\'s quite a brilliant ending that redeemed a LOT of the bad parts of this movie, but I still couldn\'t give the movie higher than 3 stars simply because of the ending... but it did pull it up from 2 stars. It's really quite ingenious and I tip my cap to Myrick and his co-writers Marty Musatov and Ethan Erwin for a smashing ending. The problem is, they don't do much to entertain us until that point.

The story is torn from the horror playbook, with a group of young kids going up to one of the kids' family home in the Louisiana bayou for their annual summer trip over the summer solstice. The house is Megan's (Elisabeth Harnois) parents house and the trip comes right on the heels of losing her twin sister, who died a mysterious death. She tries to lighten her grief by going on the trip anyway with her friends Christian (Shawn Ashmore), who was dating her twin sister (also played in flashback by Harnois), Zoe (Amanda Seyfried), her best friend, and the couple Mark (Matt O'Leary) and Alicia (Hillarie Burton). They've all graduated high school and taking one last trip to the lake house before college, but when Megan starts seeing things and getting eerie feelings that her twin sister's presence is with her, she meets a young local (Tyler Hoechlin) who educates her on local legends of voodoo and the power of communicating with the dead... especially around the time of the Solstice.

The more I think about it, the more I really like the script by Myrick, Musatov and Erwin. While the first 80 or so minutes aren't the most entertaining in the world, and the last 11 minutes are easily the best of the movie, they really answered all of the questions and tied the movie up really nicely. It's a rather smart script, but they weren't too smart about the characters. The whole "group of young kids going to a deserted place" motif has been played out so many damn times and they could've easily gotten away from it. The story really didn't NEED to have it be a group of teenagers. It could've been anyone. Hell, I think it would've been more effective if it had been a group of 40something friends who get together at this house once a year. It also didn't help that this group of young actors weren't the best actors in the world to begin with.

I see what they were doing with this casting, in trying to ensure that everyone teenager who watches WB or CW or any teen-ish show would want to see this movie. Harnois' main gig was Point Pleasant and also appeared in One Tree Hill with co-star Hillarie Burton. Tyler Hoechlin is from 7th Heaven, Amanda Seyfried is from Mean Girls and we all know Shawn Ashmore as Anna Paquin\'s main frozen squeeze in the X-Men flicks. The one that kind of surprised me was Matt O'Leary, who blew me away as the Young Fenton in the masterful horror/thriller Frailty. It was surprising since, because of his cliched, pompous *sshole character, he had probably the worst performance of all... but not by much. We get a nice appearance by R. Lee Ermey as a grizzled neighbor on the lake, but we don't get much of anything compelling from any of these young stars, although the script might carry the brunt of the blame for their shoddy performances.

Myrick does give us some solid direction here in the creepier parts, but there really is too much of this teen crap and not as much of the creepy parts. It's almost like they wanted to do a hybrid of a horror movie and Dawson's Creek, or something.

Still, when it's all said and done, the movie does make sense in a quite wonderful way, but it's almost like they tried to bore you so much for most of the movie so you won't see the ending coming. Odd strategery, if you ask me.

Sorry folks. Nothing to see here. Well, there's commentary from Myrick, but as you can tell from reading any of my reviews, I don't do commentaries. I hate them with a passion.

The disc is presented in the widescreen format, enhanced for 16x9 widescreen televisions.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

Nothing too exciting. We get a layered shot of the main cast from foreground to background, a weird background and a title card and a tagline. Yawn. The back has a pet peeve of mine - a phrase that looks like a critic quote but isn't in quotes or attributed to anyone, along with a weird list of the main cast members and their main flicks/series' below, a synopsis, random pics along with the billing block and tech specs.

This movie is easily worth a viewing because of the ending, and because of the potential that it had and was wasted on sub-standard actors and over-used settings and characters for what could've been a movie that was far greater than it really was. While it shows that Dan Myrick might be making progress in some areas, he needs to make more in others.