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A couple of
months have passed since Megan's sister
committed suicide for unknown reasons and Megan is
finally ready to go to her summer house to gather
her sister's belongings. She brings four friends with
her with whom she comes to the house every year to
celebrate solstice - or midsummer. At first everything
seems like it's going pretty smoothly, but when Megan
starts having ghost visions, a disturbing secret
unveils before her feat - and Megan has literarily
got the key to unlock it.
It wasn't until after the movie hit the 20 minute mark
that I thought "I've seen this movie before, I'm
sure of it", and when the lights on the friend's car
suddenly went on by itself I knew where that feeling
of deja vu was coming from. Solstice is actually a
remake - and an official one at that - of the Swedish
and Danish 2003 horror flick "Midsommer" (which we've
reviewed here on Slasherpool). Now, I'll be honest
with you, even though I remember really enjoying
Midsummer, I don't remember much about the film. It
was good but it was pretty forgettable - and Solstice
really nailed the forgettable part.
Solstice does to Midsummer what Pulse did to Kairo,
something gets lost in translation and it ends up
feeling like yet another American teen thriller where
stupid, rich kids have to unlock a secret. I did
remember what the twist was and they haven't changed
much in this mediocre remake. Heck, not even all the
names have been changed and I found it very amusing
to hear Americans pronounce typically Swedish names
such as "Malin" (which is pronounced Mawlin more or
less, not Maylin). The one thing that has been changed
is that this time a girl is the one seeing ghosts,
not a guy like in the original (which was one of the
reasons as to why the original turned out to be so
good - it's always girls seeing ghosts). That also
means that the voodoo-interested clerk in the nearby
store this time is a guy instead of a girl (Tuva
Novotny is greatly missed).
Midsummer is basically the second biggest holiday of
the year in Sweden, it's the one night where you are
allowed to get as drunk as you like and do things
that you would never do normally. Kind of like Halloween
is like in the US, only without the costumes. Oh and
replace the kids and sweets with grown-ups and
alcohol and you have Midsummer. It's only natural
that we have at least one horror movie about this
holiday. Meanwhile, hardly anyone knows what midsummer
(or solstice) is in the US, nor do they care much
about it, which pretty much removes the entire idea
of the movie. The scares are all the same - only not
as effective . The teens are still there - only less
likeable. The ghost is still there - only much flashier.
Yeah, it's simply been Americanized and that's not a
good thing in this case.
In the end, I don't even know why they decided to make
a remake of this teen thriller as Midsummer performed
rather poorly at the Scandinavian box-office and was
sent to DVD very quickly. I guess it's an easy way
to avoid having to write scripts. A hint for future
film makers who plan to make a horror remake though,
make sure that American people know about the holiday
that the movie is based upon so that you don't have
to spend 10 minutes of the movies' running time to
explain it to the audience. It kind of defeats the
purpose of the entire film.
Just like the original, very dry.
Generic stuff thrown together at random.
It's probably technically more high budget looking than
the original but Solstice is far from as good as
Midsummer. It's also pretty easy to tell that it is
indeed a remake where the scriptwriters haven't cared
about rewriting the script except for changing the
sex of certain persons. Enough said, it's all right
for a watch but I'd rather recommend the Scandinavian
original which beats the crap out of this.
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