Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Purely Joyful Movie!

Beautiful, moving film.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

"Coffee or Quaaludes? We've got both!", exclaims an exasperated Jared Harris, who finds himself in the middle of a transmigration struggle between the souls of his wife (Alison Elliott) and a 2000 year old Irish Druid witch. The quote is an apt description of the film itself, which wraps bursts of genre violence inside a beautifully languid art horror packaging. Nice companion piece to writer/director Almereyda's earlier vampire tale Nadja. I recommend a double feature. Wine paired with Nadja, Guinness paired with The Eternal.(I'm an enthusiast, not a critic. Thanks for reading.)

I came to this for two reasons, both of these reasons were people.The director made one of the best "Hamlets." This is a non-trivial achievement. It was not particularly adventuresome visually, but it really worked for me. How in the world he turned Julia Stiles into an effective Cordelia is a wonderful mystery. Bill Murray turned inside out. Wow.The lead actress here blew me away in "Wings of the Dove," and does every time I see it.The effect of this on me was unexpected. It is not generally liked, because not much transformative happens. Christopher Walken has a small role in the middle is oddly bad. If you think of it as a genre film, it simply fails because it touches the bases from unexpected but uninteresting directions and sometimes not at all.But I liked some elements of the story. Nominally it is a "Curse of the Mummy" sort of thing. However, you can approach this as a "Naked Lunch" sort of thing. We have the guy who is the writer. He and his wife are substance abusers of a high degree. Her name is Nora, a name that carries huge associations from James Joyce. Predictably, his name is Jim. Together they booze into an alternative story, in Ireland of course, situating deep in the bog.Its about sex, magic and story. Each of James and Nora has a doppelganger. In Jim's case it is his son, also Jim who is our designated observer. In Nora's case, it is a magical being with hypnotic sexual powers. Much is made of the relationship between this sort of addictive sex and creation. Natch.The guide through this wonderland is a newly pubescent girl named Alice. There are characters that surround these, but they are there only to explain things to us. Walken's character has the most overt and ridiculous lines.So you can see that the shape is pretty well imagined. And in fact it maps almost directly to the sort of thinking used to reimagine an film Hamlet as a film student. But that shape is wasted on what in all other respects is a bad movie. Nora here is not redheaded except in the most sexually charged scenes where a red light is used.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This is an unusual horror movie that won't be to everyones' tastes, though I think it's probably more accessible than the same director's unusual vampire movie Nadja.Nora and Jim travel to Ireland, so that their young son can meet the mother's ailing grandmother. Nora's uncle is caring for her, with the help of a wise young girl named Alice that he has adopted. The uncle is decidedly strange (that he's played by Christopher Walken should be a clue), and has an obsession with a mummy in the basement. The mummy is an Iron Age Druid witch who had been preserved in a peat bog.Nora and Jim are very much in love, and love alcohol; they're a little bit like Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man series. Nora's been having blackouts and visions that are possibly unrelated to her drinking, but she is supposed to quit drinking anyway. Nora begins to wish she hadn't returned home to Ireland.Among the really strong suits of the film are the excellent cinematography and locations. They can be chillingly beautiful at times, as is the soundtrack.It has a great song by Cat Power, "Rockets," which is on at least a couple of her albums. I first learned of her from this movie, and am very glad I did. It has a great song by Varnaline, "Sweet Life" (incidentally, available in Real Audio form on their official website), which plays on the jukebox at the Irish pub. It has a great song by Episonic, "My Head Becomes the Sky," which plays over the end credits. The score is also quite effective.

1st watched 5/26/2002 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Michael Almereyda): Weird story about a druid witch who tries to capture eternity by inheriting her granddaughter's body. At least I think that was the relationship. A kind of eerie quality is held throughout this film not unlike Stephen King's The Shining. The difference is that there was campiness in Nicholson's performance that isn't at all in this film. This is all taken very seriously until near the end when some lame one-liners and attempts at litening up the mood don't work at all. The performances are not the problem here, but the story is. Everything doesn't seem to come together very smoothly and the viewer is left with a lot of pieces of information and no real understanding of what happened in the film. There is a very small throwaway performance by Christopher Walken as the uncle of the granddaughter which, of course, gives him top-billing in an attempt to sell the film. Don't buy into this gimmick and avoid this film.