The Eclipse: Review By B. Alan Orange

Films photographed in Ireland seldom lose. If the narrative is boring the life out of your weary bones, you can always peer over the actor's thick shoulder and take in the lush green scenery drifting behind them. The Eclipse is no different. Filmed in the beautiful shantytown of Cobh in County Cork, this backdrop of emerald trees and wisping water is like a teardrop flicked from God's cheek. The vistas become their own stately group of characters, and they're sometimes more interesting than what's going on in the foreground. That's not to slight Conor McPherson's quiet ghost story. His film is a slow push towards exquisite redemption, but the synopsis might prop you up for something completely different and slightly less horrifying.

As soon as you hear ghosts, you think horror or dramatic suspense. The Eclipse is not your typical run of the mill spookhouse thriller. It moves at a languid pace, not at all in a hurry to reveal itself as a romantic aria. There are a few great jump scares, and they're definitely more memorable than what we found in last year's Paranormal Activity. But these specters aren't really the lingering dead. Their manifestations of an ill mind. One that is plagued with guilt and remorse. McPherson toys with this idea for the better part of The Eclipse, but he never quite reveals his poker hand. This isn't a spoiler, as the entire running duration of the film is set up as one giant metaphor. You'll either see it or you won't, only ever accepting the surface scares as a pinning reality.

Ciaran Hinds is Michael Farr, a lumbering oak of a man. His eyes bagged with black sadness. His wife has died of cancer, leaving him with a young boy and girl to look after. The stress is starting to splinter his spine, yet he keeps his emotions bottled tight. In the face of his children, he never grieves. This is a problem because he can't seem to ever find time alone. Farr's wife left a wheelchair-bound father in her wake. The man, locked away in a nursing home, hates Michael with every once of his being. It's no wonder that our hero starts seeing blood drenched ghosts every time he turns around.

On the opposite ends of Farr's spectrum is Nicholas Holden, a brash writer that swings his dick like a sword. Aidan Quinn sucks in this tiny life and breaths it out in long plooms of fire, burning everything in his path. He is an unabashed dickhe*d. A hate collector that tears into those lesser beings around him. He is having an extramarital affair with another writer. And in a way, his wife has become a ghost too. Her flesh and blood appearance at a bar party is as frightening to Nicholas as Farr's dead wife creeping through the downstairs pantry is to him. Both men are battling inner demons. They are the yin and yang of this weird concoction, and they meet in a quite natural way.

To strive off the madness welling up inside his brain, Farr has volunteered at the local book fair. His job is to chauffer the writers back and forth between their rented cottages and the auditorium where they engage with their fans throughout the week. He first picks up Nicolas, who quickly exposes himself as a braggart and a posh creep. Farr doesn't like the man, and takes offense to the ugly diatribe that dribbles out of his mouth like a broken spigot. Yet, he doesn't ever voice his distrusting perceptions. Instead, he thinly hides this disgust behind his ever-deadening eyeballs. Even when the author belittles his way of life and his own human dignity, Farr is a statue.

Michael's next assigned pick-up is supernatural novelist Lena Morelle (Iben Hjehjle), a tiny blast of sexual heat Farr is unable to hold within his own hand. Their attraction isn't immediate. But their impending bond is indelible. The actors have a natural easiness about them, and we buy into their blossoming relationship wholeheartedly. They aren't physical lovers. But their shared fascination with the undead certainly brings them emotionally closer together. Farr slowly, but surely, becomes attached to this popular artist. Much too his disdain, he learns that Nicolas and Lena are having an extramarital affair. After some quite disturbing circ*mstances involving his father-in-law, Michael runs to Lena for comfort. Instead of a warm shoulder to rest his weary head on, he is confronted with Holden's cruel adjectives, which the acclaimed wordsmith sets up and spikes deep into the grieving man's soul.

This strange triangle works itself out in a natural progression. Lena sees the error of her ways, leaving Nicolas naked and locked within his own spinning tsunami of hatred. Quinn relishes living inches underneath this horrible man's skin, and he proves to be a fascinating watch. As Farr begins to accept the spooky ghosts in his own life, his bond with Lena grows ever stronger. Certainly the jealous type, Holden comes after the brick house porter, despite their size differences. It's a heated rumble inside a small cottage, and its one of the more realistic fight sequences rendered for the screen. Conor has a gentile way with this material. He lets everything build into a horrible explosion. And if you stay with it, you'll definitely walk away with some sense of gratification.

The Eclipse is a certain type of movie for a certain type of person. It's for your lonely aunt on the couch, her mouth hovering around a glass of red wine. Its certainly not for the Friday night crowd, awaited those well timed scares like a group of horror aficionados. Conor has crafted a unique romantic-horror combo that may polarize lovers of either genre. It's a unique experiment. And it gets a Whoop-Doo! On Medium heat from me.

(All of B. Alan Orange's reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)