The film starts out with a one sided view of a visit to the psychiatrist's office. This is just one of the subtle, yet tightly integrated elements of the plot and the highly focused character study of Guilian that will keep you thinking for the first 50 minutes of the film.

We know it's going to be a stalker in the woods film from the start. Consider the genre for a moment. Over the top gore. Hockey Masks and decapitations. Chainsaws and villains wearing other people's skin. These are plot devices right out of the same fantasy world as light sabers and gremlins. Even the rabid man-eating animal, usually a bear, fallen out of favor recently with the exception of Wolf, is pretty contrived. But here is a film that simply presents you with off-balanced characters, and others that we can detect have something creepy lurking below their surface, without contriving anything too obvious to make it seem in forced and cliche.

Annie Clark's performance is top rate. She makes believable the kind of hide-in-your-sleeping bag naiveté of someone afraid of animal sounds in the night with the savvy of a teenage girls who knows better than to tell someone she is all alone in the woods for two days. Her character arc follows the path of Ripley and Sarah Conner, yet it doesn't seem forced. We hope her future projects track more in the direction of Ms. Weaver than Ms. Hamilton. This is not "The Glass House", where the highlight of the characters performance is her bikini scene. We love the genuine beauty of the woods and the green eyed gaze of Ms. Clark as she looks for a way forward from a personal tragedy of her past.

In the last 20 minutes of the film, there are a few tropes to be reckoned with. The engine that won't start. The rescuer knocked out from behind. But even so, this is no "Blair Witch Project" where chicanery with the camera work demand attention that is drawn away from the lack of plot, nor is it a big budget affair with or over the top set pieces designed to distract from deficient writing.

The film is great at getting and holding scenes of tension. That is what a suspense film should do first, and it that regard I highly recommend Solo. Watch it alone, a few days before your (or your child's) next camping trip (I don't mean trip to an RV campsite, I mean real camping in the public game preserve or even your large suburban back yard) and I guarantee you'll have trouble going to sleep.

This movie is exactly what you expect- a young girl alone on an island and creepy things happen as she has to survive for a few days to prove that she has what it takes to be a camp counselor. But, saying that, it is not a bad effort. I have seen hundreds of thriller/horror movies in my time and this is not as bad as others would tell you. Yes, some of it has been recycled and yes, there isn't much new or original here but there was something about the lead character, Gillian that I liked and I was appalled at some people commenting on her body size. What does that have to do with anything? It is a decent effort. It won't scare the life out of you, but there are some good twists and turns that you might be able to see coming. I am not going to give anything away, but I would give it a chance.It is worth a look.

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Spoiler Alert

The music by composer Todor Kobakov is probably the best part of this movie and for budget fare, is quite good. The main actress (character is more apt because there is little acting here.) Nancy Clark is a teen possessed by demons of her dead sister. Oh my. Instead of therapy, let's go to a creepy camp as a counselor and willingly accept isolation on an island with a ghost?

The movie is highly derivative but how can one not be in this genre? The acting is minimal and every actor accents the creepiness factor with little result. The camp director is more creepy than the exiled counselor/murderer. Richard Clarkin as "Fred" so overacts and mugs his scenes that it's almost comic. Maybe that's how he prepared for his wooden performance. He gets bonked on the head and dies where everyone else who gets bonked survives somehow. Oh Boy. The credits list a therapist (This person never appears in the movie.) and I have a feeling that the therapist was there for the actors coming to grips with minimal direction and guilt from mugging.

Supposedly this Gillian (Clark) is forced, as some kind of camp hazing, to spend the night alone on an island. She's rarely alone on this island and the predictable players appear right on cue. She's damaged goods having been the cause of her sisters demise some years earlier in a pool drowning. But even with cutaway scenes, this part of the plot goes nowhere. Either does this movie.

Productions values are high but I would find a better writer. Isaac Cravit creates some decent shots and there are some interesting camera angles but the writing, UGH! It's horrible and none of the elements presented in the exposition are worked out. Instead, we get new one as if we will be surprised. This is a major flaw and I mean major. When scenes are supposed to be suspenseful, you find your self thinking WTF? That could have been handled a lot better. I don't think a suspense movie is supposed to create the suspense for the next missed story or cinematic idea,

We all know these movies are based on supposedly smart people doing stupid things and this movie is no exception. But here we have a stupid writer/director who got lost in his own brilliance or lack thereof. Also, his timing is off. some scenes end and but the shot continues. Others never find an overall rhythm . The editor, Adam Locke-Norton must have been pulling his hair out and arguing constantly to shorten some of the takes. Alas, he lost the arguments.