Editorials
Blood Moon: 5 Great Horror Movie Eclipses for the Longest Partial Lunar Eclipse in 580 Years!
Last night, the moon slipped into the Earth’s shadow for six hours, the longest-lasting partial lunar eclipse in 580 years. It’ll be hundreds of years before we’ll see another celestial event like it again. But maybe that’s a good thing; horror teaches us repeatedly that strange phenomena bring deadly omens.
Or, in the case of an eclipse, it often brings about apocalyptic threats.
If you missed the lunar event or want to follow it up with appropriate horror viewing, here are five horror movies in which eclipses are vital to the plot.
Warlock: The Armageddon
In this Anthony Hickox (Waxwork, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth) directed sequel, the eponymous Warlock (Julian Sands) makes his return via a gross-out birth. On the night of a lunar eclipse, a woman in possession of a rune stone rapidly becomes pregnant, gestates, and a full-grown Warlock violently tears out of her. His mission this time is to gather all of the runestones to summon dad, Satan, and bring about Armageddon. It’s up to a pair of teens, descendants of Druids, to stop it with their magical abilities. It’s every bit the fun ‘90s sequel that it sounds.
Pitch Black
After crash landing on a desert planet, the crew and passengers of a commercial freight ship soon discover why it’s been seemingly abandoned when a rare solar eclipse begins. As the world descends into complete, pitch-black darkness, underground aliens erupt onto the surface for a feeding frenzy. Survival doesn’t come easy, but trust among the group proves even trickier. The sci-fi horror movie launched a Riddick (Vin Diesel) franchise, and it’s not hard to see why. High on action and body count, with a stone-cold antihero leading the charge.
Veronica
After the teacher explains how some ancient cultures used a solar eclipse to summon dark spirits, Veronica’s friends decide the solar eclipse would be a great time to abuse an Ouija board. Of course, Veronica finds herself plagued by a malevolent entity soon after. Paco Plaza’s supernatural chiller brings the scares and offers a sweet sibling relationship that grounds the horror with heart. Playing with an Ouija board is always a recipe for disaster, but during an eclipse? Please don’t do it.
The House of the Devil
Ti West’s ‘80s set cult horror movie sees a young college student, Samantha, taking on an unusual babysitting gig. She’s so desperate for money that she ignores all the signs, including that it’s the night of a lunar eclipse. Poor Samantha realizes far too late that her eccentric clients have ritualistic plans for her. West’s fantastic slow burn brings the atmosphere, allowing its shocking bursts of violence and terrifying imagery to pack a harder punch.
Gerald’s Game
Jessie winds up handcuffed to a bed and left stranded entirely when her husband Gerald dies of a heart attack in an attempt to spice up their marriage. The fight for survival forces Jessie to look within and confront her past, including the harrowing event that took place during a solar eclipse in childhood. Mike Flanagan brings the horror and pathos in spades, building to a gruesome finale. That same solar eclipse connects Gerald’s Game to Dolores Claiborne in more ways than one, making for a perfect double feature.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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