Snark, Critic and Pop!

Editor’s note: This is the review Daniel posted covering the 2009 Charlotte Film Festival from our old site Film.IsPwn.com last year.  For our full coverage of last years event click here.

Scary movies are not my favorite genre. It’s a matter of personal taste, of course. To me, fear isn’t an emotional response I want to plop down $10 at the theater in order to experience, especially when I can get it for free on the evening news.

I detest torture porn (the Saw franchise, Hostel, etc.) and I have no interest in slasher films (Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc.). The only kind of scary movie I actually get a kick out of is the spooky, Sixth Sensekind of movie, where the violence, if there is any, doesn’t exceed PG-13 caliber, and the terror is all in your mind as you wonder “What’s in the shadows?” (Yes, I know I’m a wuss, it’s something I’ve had to learn to live with ever since the “too scared to go on the Scooby Doo Rollercoaster” incident in my childhood.)

A perfect example is M. Night Shyamalan’s the Village, which was a great theatrical experience (until the lame twist ending, which I refuse to acknowledge further). The moments where you’re watching the woods, wondering what’s out there, the monster you’ve created in your brain and the carnage it could cause is far more terrifying than any creature a digital effects artist could render. Such is it with the Eclipse, a supernatural, spooky, romantic, at times charming, mostly doggone scary, Irish ghost story. Yup, another one of “those.”

Ciarán Hinds stars as Michael, a widower who lost his wife to cancer a few years ago, and lives with his two kids in a spooky house in a spooky section of Ireland. Right off the bat there are two expectations that you would have about a ghost story with that set-up: The wife will haunt Michael and the kids are going to be used to induce cheap, Spielbergian fright. Not even close, amigo.

Michael thinks he sees someone in his house at night, and he thinks it’s his late wife’s father, who is still alive in a retirement home, except Dad is accounted for so it couldn’t be him, could it? You can’t be haunted by the ghost of someone not quite dead . . . or CAN THEY? (Cue scary music.)

Michael starts a friendship and possible romance with a visiting novelist from London, Lena (Iben Hjejle), who has seen a ghost in her day and now writes supernatural thrillers. It’s a very sweet middle-aged romance, complicated not just by the occasional ghostly apparition and unnatural sound but by Aidan Quinn as a narcissistic, popular novelist who sets his unwelcome sites on Lena despite being married, and deems Michael to be a nuisance and a stalker. With the exception of Quinn’s loudmouth louse — who is more pitiable than detestible at the end — all these characters are sympathetic and/or likeable in their way; Michael’s daughter is a minor character, but she adds some really sweet moments to the film.

Great performances from the entire cast, particulary Hinds. Writer/director Conor McPherson has out Shyamalaned M. Night Shyamalan, methinks, without resorting to a huge, GOTCHA ending.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story or plot, because I went in knowing basically nothing and came out thoroughly spooked and completely entertained. I want to see it again, if only because, especially spending most of the last half-half with my glasses off (blurry = less scary!).

What I love about the Eclipse is it doesn’t follow any of the cookie cutter Hollywood formulas. The in the beginning where Michael first thinks he sees something in his house after hours, I was waiting for the obligatory false scare. You know the false scare, it’s when you expect a character to be attacked by the knife wielding maniac and instead he/she and the audience are startled by what turns out to be a cat or something equally innocuous.

The false scare isn’t there, instead the Eclipse just builds an overabundance of mood and eeriness, and the handful of times something actually does happen, the audience (and, yes, me) freaked out. Thanks, Charlotte Film Festival for bringing this little gem to Charlotte, it almost makes up for inflicting the travesty that was Bronson on me.

I’m not sure if the Eclipse will be as effective on DVD, but I say go see this in the theaters (and, bear in mind, this is from someone who doesn’t like being scared).