SOLO (2013)

Studio:       Shock Till You Drop
Director:    Isaac Cravit
Writer:       Isaac Cravit
Producer:  Chris Bennett, Robert Budreau
Stars:     Annie Clark, Daniel Kash, Richard Clarkin, Steven Love, Alyssa Capriotti

Review Score:

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Summary:

A teenage camp counselor discovers she is not alone when she is forced to spend two nights isolated on an island as part of her initiation.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Troubled 17-year-old Gillian visits her therapist to discuss her medication and ongoing depression. Gillian reveals that her friend Lacey helped land her a job as a counselor at Camp Kaya.

At Camp Kaya, Lacey introduces Gillian to fellow counselor Marty. Nicknamed “Martian” because of his odd personality, Marty is the son of camp proprietor Fred. Gillian learns that as part of her new hire initiation, she must spend two nights by herself on a nearby island. Marty tells Gillian that a girl named Britney was too frightened to complete her “solo.” Lacey reveals that the island is reportedly haunted by the ghost of a girl named Janie. Janie was a young camper who disappeared mysteriously one night years ago when camp owner Fred was himself still a counselor.

Fred takes Gillian to the island via motorboat. On the water, they notice another man leaving the supposedly private island. Fred leaves Gillian alone and returns to the mainland.

While hiking, Gillian finds an old child’s doll and takes it with her back to camp. After a swim, she sees a strange man named Ray sitting near her tent with his dog named Bear. Initially suspicious of the man, she ultimately accepts Ray’s help bandaging a small wound on her leg. That night, someone enters Gillian’s tent while she sleeps.

Gillian wakes to find her supplies scattered on the ground outside her tent. Marty eventually emerges from the trees after trying to frighten Gillian, but he claims he did not enter her tent or toss her things. Gillian realizes that the doll is also missing from her tent.

Marty and Gillian search the island and find a tent with photographs taped to the interior wall. The photographs are of Janie and confirm that Marty’s father was a counselor when the girl went missing. Frightened by the strange discovery, Gillian radios for help.

Ray returns to the island in response to Gillian’s distress call. Gillian tells Ray about the tent and Ray offers to take a look. Distrustful of Ray, Marty insists on accompanying him while Gillian says in her camp.

Gillian hears Ray screaming. She finds Ray with a bloody wound on his head. He claims that someone hit him and Marty disappeared in the confusion. Ray tells her they must leave the island immediately.

While packing her things, Gillian takes another look at one of the photographs and realizes that Ray was also a counselor when Janie disappeared. She pretends to have cell phone reception and feigns a call back to Camp Kaya in order to make Ray leave.

Gillian follows Ray back to his tent and finds Marty inside with a severe head wound. She pulls him away while Ray is elsewhere. Bear finds the two teens in the forest. Gillian uses her meds to drug food that she feeds to the dog to stop his barking. Gillian texts a “send help” message to Lacey, puts her cell phone in a Ziploc bag, and sends it out to sea, but Lacey does not receive the message in time to warn Fred before he leaves to pick up Gillian. Ray eventually takes Gillian captive.

Thinking that Ray blames himself for Janie’s disappearance, Gillian tries appealing to him by admitting that her sister died when she was not paying attention. Ray reveals himself to be Janie’s killer and Gillian realizes that he spends his time in the woods trying to remember where he buried her.

Gillian wakes on the last morning to find herself bound and gagged in a boat. Fred arrives on the island and confronts Ray. Ray kills Fred with a shovel. Gillian is able to free herself and, after a struggle, she kills Ray by slamming a boat anchor in his face. Gillian puts Marty in Fred’s motorboat and heads back to the mainland.

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Review:

Every mystery movie has a conceit requiring some suspension of disbelief.  “Solo” doesn’t ask for too much to be forgiven, although the idea behind its story is more than a little questionable given how society generally operates in the real world.

17-year-old Gillian struggles with a family tragedy.  Swirling in guilt, suicidal tendencies, and a cocktail of anti-depressants, she takes a job as a camp counselor after her best gal pal lies to the owner about vast outdoor experience Gillian does not actually have.  So that parents can have the confidence that their kids are in capable hands, Camp Kaya proprietor Fred gives new employees a baptism by fire.  Gillian must spend two nights roughing it on her own in a secluded forest on a private island nearby.

Now, everything I know about camp counseling comes from the “Friday the 13th” franchise, so I am no expert in the proper manner of preparing new recruits when it comes to that job.  Even with legal culpability set to the side though, abandoning an underage girl on an island without cell phone service smacks of all kinds of danger.

On their way across the water, Gillian spies a strange man boating near the supposedly abandoned property where she will spend the next 48 hours alone and asks, “who’s that?”  Fred waves to the shadowed figure and responds, “good question.”  Sure, Fred.  Go ahead and leave the untrained girl alone in the wilderness where unknown men are seen lurking about.  What can possibly go wrong?  Even if this were not the beginning of a thriller movie, this is already a setup for certain disaster.

Once that lump is swallowed, however, “Solo” shakes out to be a quietly engaging suspense whodunit.  Big boys of isolated woodland horror have nothing to fear from this small indie production, but it is a filling enough piece of bite-sized entertainment for anyone not too gorged on the young woman in peril premise.

The script and the story won’t win awards for originality, but “Solo” stays afloat in part because of its well-cast onscreen talent.  Leading lady Annie Clark’s background as a featured player on “Degrassi” in no way skews her performance.  100+ episodes of the Canadian teen soap produced in a fast-paced telenovela format fosters some trepidation that a similarly melodramatic style might permeate her “Solo” role.  Instead, Clark and director Isaac Cravit give her persona space to breathe and emote with smart confidence as opposed to forced dialogue and straining character development.

The three men playing potential foils or possible allies exhibit enough distrustfulness and uneasy charm to keep their true motives in the dark while it still matters to setting up the story.  These performances keep the train on the tracks when the tempo stretches too thin to do it alone.

When it comes time for Gillian to go into survival mode, “Solo” does not go the predictable route of suddenly turning the heroine into a female John Rambo.  She doesn’t smear mud on as war paint or start fashioning spears she can use to booby trap the forest.  Gillian uses what a 17-year-old girl with no camping experience might actually utilize without real knowledge of how to exploit an outdoor environment.  She finds a way to send her cell phone out to sea in a Ziploc bag as a distress signal and uses her prescription meds to drug food.  These are small details about her behavior that go a long way towards adding realism to a movie that otherwise does not have a whole lot of it.

“Solo” shows its hand too early when the psychological “who can be trusted” angle makes way for a by-the-book action-fueled third act.  At this point, the movie loses much of what made it intriguing in the first place by taking an easy route to the end credits that is entirely too beige.

“Solo” takes its time building up, and many will use the long pauses to poke holes and compare similarities to sub-genre tropes they have long grown tired of.  Anyone open to reasonable expectations for a quick movie with only a small ambition for mild thrills might find “Solo” to be a decent diversion from the usual blood-soaked meat grinders of camp counselor slashing.

Review Score:  65

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