About George Thompson
Location: Missouri
Occupation: Writer
Bio: Bio Retired now, I make my home in Ironton once again after being gone for sixty years. I write a poem every day, an article or two a week and have a continuing column at wickedwordsmith.com on the Web. My pleasures are writing, feeding birds and taking care of my new cat, Mandi.
Posts: 178
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Solstice is about voodoo at a summerhouse near a lake somewhere in Louisiana. I say “somewhere” because there are opening scenes of the cast passing through New Orleans and driving across the bridge north across Lake Pontchartrain towards Mandeville. The bridge trip is twenty-five miles one way.
Her friends want to get Megan (Elisabeth Harnois) away from the city and out to her mom and dad’s summerhouse for a rest. She has been acting strangely and they all want her feel better about herself and the death of Sophie, her twin sister. The group stops at a small service station and Megan starts reading the magazine that the cashier, Nick (Tyler Hoechlin), has been reading. It’s all about witchcraft and voodoo. Megan feels sucked into an article titled “The Dead Speak” and seems mesmerized by the time they reach the summerhouse. She senses something is strange, but it’s unclear if it’s the death of her twin or the house.
They move on to the summerhouse where things start happening to Megan that she can’t explain. She feels they are somehow connected to her dead sister but she doesn’t know in what way. Everyone else treats her like she is a spoil sport, ruining their fun. The summer solstice is about to take place and everyone has gathered on the lawn for the event. Yet, there is an omni-presence in the air that has them spooked. The shadows seem deeper, the crickets sound louder. The ribbit of the frogs seems to take over the night air and then it begins to rain.
Solstice throbs with excitement from beginning to end. There’s always something around the corner that makes you wonder if Megan is hallucinating or if her dead sister is really playing a hand in what’s going on. The characters find a dead body in the woods and through flashbacks, we find out that one of the friends, Christian (Shawn Ashmore) is responsible for the accident the summer before that led to the death of a little girl. Rather than tell the authorities he and Sophie bury the young girl in the woods and he keeps the “secret” from everyone else until the body is found. At about this time, my spine began to tingle.
The special feature on the DVD is an audio commentary by the director. If you like voodoo, you’re going to like Solstice.
