The Eclipse: Critic Reviews

A smart, scary, spine-tinglingly matter-of-fact ghost story.

An interesting blend of very nicely observed character based drama with some horror movie effects.

Makes good on its name by sometimes obscuring its themes and even point, which can have its charms though also severe drawbacks.

McPherson has managed a rare hat trick in genre mash-up, fashioning a deeply absorbing movie that balances horror, romance, comedy and observant humanism with surprising finesse.

The town and surrounding landscapes make a gorgeous setting -- the Irish tourist board will be happy -- but at its heart The Eclipse is a small, contained ghost story about a haunted man learning to exorcise himself.

The Eclipse is a curious Irish ghost story that fiddles with the recipe just enough to produce interesting results.

There are few surprises hidden in the film's hushed spookiness.

A leisurely and quite lovely drama that honors the conventions of gothic ghost stories without the slightest stain of self-irony.

The supernatural never seems far out of sight in Ireland, and it creeps in here and there during The Eclipse, a dark romance set at a literary festival in the County Cork cathedral town of Cobh. I'm not sure it's required, but it does little harm.

Hinds has been ready for a role of this size and shape for years; it was simply a matter of finding it, and its finding him.

The whole thing would probably have flown apart if not for Hinds, whose character, like a dark star imploding, pulls everything toward him.

The Eclipse is about death and sadness, rebirth and possibility. The film is anchored by Hinds' performance -- the actor brings a soulful melancholy to the proceedings.

Quinn, alternately charming and loathsome, is brilliant, as is Hinds, an actor who has elevated everything he's been in.

McPherson balances these disparate elements with great skill, never resorting to cheap scare tactics in what amounts to a sensitive character study.

An above-average ghost tale elevated by its cast.

McPherson brews a strangely appealing composite, a movie that is mostly character-driven romance but that seasons the proceedings with timely scare-your-pants-off moments of horror.

Ultimately, though, it feels fleeting and slight passing across our line of vision, never a full but merely a partial engagement.

he acting is of the highest caliber, but the characters and their circumstances are underwritten.

The Eclipse finds plenty of heartfelt gravity in its tale of love lost and found on a gothic coast.

No, this is not The Eclipse where Monica Vitti and Alain Delon fail to rendezvous on Antonioni's empty street corner.

The story is thin, but it has a kind of easy Irish charm.

A solid and occasionally genuinely freaky little effort.

The way McPherson handles the relationships in the movie is remarkable, in that he doesn't fall prey to a playwright's natural tendency to try put everything into the text.

Blends romance, drama and supernatural horror into a truly original, thoroughly unforgettable concoction.

Being haunted by one's past really means something from director Conor McPherson