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1. 

   Posted By ManeatingLemur on August 3, 2010 @ 3:25 am

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   ★★★☆☆

   I appreciate what Conor McPherson was aiming for with The Eclipse, but this movie just never comes together. Michael Farr’s (Ciaran Hinds) a recent widower trying to come to grips with his loss and it’s not going well. He’s sinking into depression and isolation, and his future looks bleak until Lena (Iben Hjejle) comes into his orbit, bringing a spark of light and hope. McPherson’s approach of lacing this familiar dramatic territory with potent jolts of horror is inspired and every so often, The Eclipse finds a tone of poignancy mixed with dread that’s sheer beauty. Unfortunately, most of the film is wildly uneven – a scene that’s sweet, sad and touching is bracketed with stretches that drift aimlessly, coming off as icy and detached and killing any momentum that McPherson had built up stone cold dead. It’s a damned shame, too – if McPherson had been able to sustain the movie’s affecting moments, The Eclipse would’ve been truly haunting, something special that would’ve proven that romance/horror hybrids could rise above mawkish crapfests like Twilight. As it is, it’s a weird little curiosity that’s not cohesive or effective enough to recommend.

   Shortly after his wife’s death, Michael’s life is slowly but surely falling apart. He’s able to function teaching his woodworking classes and helping to organize the Irish town of Cobh’s literary fair, but only just. He’s trying to be a good parent to his children, but he’s too consumed by his own grief to be able to connect with them any longer. Michael’s also drifting away from his father-in-law, who’s languishing in an assisted living home, torn up with anguish over his daughter’s death and effectively walled off from the family that’s all he has left of her.

   Michael had literary ambitions when he was younger and before his loss, he was still an ardent follower of the latest and greatest happenings in the publishing world, so you’d think the literary fair might help spark him back into life. No such luck. Michael gets stuck with the chore of shuttling best-selling, critically adored author Nicholas Holden (Aiden Quinn) around, and you couldn’t find a bigger prima donna if you tried. If losing your spouse wasn’t enough to deep-six your will to live, being trapped in a car with this pissy, self-important drama queen would seal the deal.

   Then there are the inexplicable noises Michael hears in the house. He’s visited by the ghastly, ravaged remains of his father-in-law, which completely throws him because the man’s still alive. Is this real or is Michael finally losing the last of what little stability he’s got? When his daughter violently shakes him awake after a particularly horrific vision, Michael’s half-certain his sanity’s slipping away.

   Then comes Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), a gifted writer on all things paranormal and a lady who genuinely seems to feel for Michael. She just might have the insight to help him sort out the nightmare visitations he’s been having and it looks like there’s the promise of romance on the horizon. At least there would be if uber-prick Nicholas weren’t so intent on making drunken, desperate attempts to get Lena in the sack.

   The Eclipse had the potential to be the most bittersweet, haunting horror/romance since Jeff Goldblum got in touch with his inner insect in The Fly. McPherson just can’t pull everything together, though. Individual scenes exert an achingly sweet allure that’s laced with an underlying dread, only to be undercut by stiff and listless stretches that become too artsy and oblique for their own damned good. That’s too bad – I’d love to see a really great gothic romance make the rounds to show the pikers who crapped out the Twilight series how it’s supposed to be done. Until then, though, we’ve always got the Cronenberg classic.