Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

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.

A more than competent supernatural thriller (a remake of the Danish film "Midsommer") that will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout and have you jumping out of your skin on more than one occasion. The story maintains a fine pace, wasting no time getting down to the creepy stuff and keeping you guessing right to the very end. The story is set in the swamplands of Louisiana and involves a group of high school seniors (why do these things always involve teenagers, I wonder?) trying to come to terms with the recent death of Sophie, twin sister of one of their number (Meghan). Although it strikes me that spending the week of the summer solstice in the remote holiday home owned by Sophie and Meghan's family is probably not the best way to do that.

Unlike many films of this genre, "Solstice" manages to both build suspense and become steadily more scary without descending into the realms of complete silliness. (Well, OK, it has some moments of moderate silliness as well as a fair collection of clichés obligatory to the genre but these never really detract from the action -- although they will probably destroy your trust in Louisiana plumbing, as well as putting you off watermelons, for ever more.)

All in all, though, this is worthy addition to the genre and it would be a good idea to grab yourself a copy in time for Halloween.