The Eternal

I watched 'Trance' on the strength of Almereyda's arty vampire flick 'Nadja' and the presence of Christopher Walken, a great favourite of mine. I shouldn't have bothered. The movie starts off interestingly enough with the New York sequences, and the all-too-brief appearance of the late Jason Miller ('The Exorcist'/'The Ninth Configuration'), but as soon as they hit Ireland, it all goes rapidly downhill.

To add insult to injury, Walken's role is basically nothing more than a glorified cameo! Bigger than 'Sleepy Hollow' say, nothing to get your teeth into. I've liked Jared Harris in the past, in 'Happiness' and yes, 'Nadja', but he's quite poor in places here, as is the main female lead who I wasn't familiar with.

Overall, mediocre and unsuccessful in holding your attention. I actually nodded off at one stage, which is always a warning sign! A major disappointment when compared with the potential Almereyda showed with 'Nadja'. Even 'Cherry 2000' is better!!

You might say that 1998 was the Year of the Mummy. Decades went by like desert sands in an hourglass without seeing so much as a single atrophied undead Egyptian dragging his moldy bones and rotting cerements out of the tomb and across the silver screen. Then, all of a sudden, there were not one but three mummy projects in the works. The most high profile and successful was Universal's bone-headed, big budget re-make of "The Mummy". The competition, Russell Mulcahey's "Talos the Mummy", was retitled "Tale of the Mummy" and downgraded to a DTV (Direct-To-Video) release. Likewise, Michael Almereyda's "Trance" - the tale not of an Egyptian mummy, but an Irish one - was re-titled "The Eternal: Kiss of the Mummy" and by-passed movie theatres in favor of a video release. And that's a shame, because Almereyda (who made his mark with the arty "Dracula's Daughter" remake "Nadja") crafted an eerie little Gothic fairytale that is far more interesting and inspired than its boring and bloated competition.

The plot concerns Nora (Elliott), a young American woman of Irish origin who, well, lives up the stereotype of her people and is a bit of a lush. She and her equally inebriated husband Jeff (Harris, who played Dracula's son in "Nadja") are coming home from their latest drunken binge one night when Nora takes a tumble down the stairs of their New York apartment building. Nora survives the fall, but is soon visited by headaches, nosebleeds and hallucinations for her trouble.

Determined to dry out for the sake of their young son, the couple head to Ireland (not *exactly* the best place to give up the sauce) where they pay a visit her grandmother and Uncle Bill (a typically gaunt and creepy Chris Walken) in their huge, labrynthinian mansion. Uncle Bill harbors a dark and fascinating secret in the basement: the perfectly preserved, mummified remains of a Druid witch; one of those fascinating "bog-men" you might have read about in National Geographic or seen on the Discovery Channel. Only this one is considerably livelier than your average bog-person and, as it happens, turns out to be a distant ancestor of Nora's.

Poor old Uncle Bill quietly explains to her that the druid witch was neither good not evil in her life, but more like a force of nature. But he and we learn different when the mummy gets her groove on and sets out to steal the body, soul and identity of her hapless descendant.

One of the things I like about Almereyda's neo-Gothic-monster movies is the fact he doesn't shy away from the kitschier and pulpier elements inherent to the genre. On the contrary, he rushes to embrace them for his own purposes. During the last reel, our heroes try to burn, break, stake, and even ELECTROCUTE the Druid bitch in an orgy of retro mayhem reminiscent of old 50's Sci-Fi horror epics like "The Thing".

It's a damn shame this clever cross between a mummy movie and a witchcraft thriller didn't get the theatrical release and critical attention it deserved. Like Stuart Gordon's ghastly gem "Castle Freak", this is a DTV release well worth the rental. It has all of the atmospherics and snappy dialog of "Nadja" without any of the annoying and pretentious Pixelvision crap. Here's hoping Alemereyda takes a shot of re-vamping werewolves next! The boy got game.

The weirdest thing about this odd little movie is that its labelled a remake of The Mummy (1932) (And subsequent remakes).

But instead of a mummy we have a witch.

And instead of Egypt it's Ireland.

And instead of being good, its terrible.

Starring Christopher Walken and Jared Harris, even a decent cast couldn't turn this one around.

The plot is thoroughly confuddled, the script is dire and the only thing that the movie has going for it is the finale but even that is recycled.

The Eternal (Otherwise known as Trance) is a hard one to pigeon hole. It's not exactly a traditional horror, more a supernatural thriller maybe?

One thing is for sure, the movie isn't as smart as the creators clearly thought it was and falls under the category of instantly forgettable.

The Good:

Walken and Harris do fine

The Bad:

Messy score/soundtrack

Walken is wasted

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Getting knocked out twice within the space of a few minutes has to have a lasting impact right?

Upon concluding my viewing of "Trance," or "The Eternal," or whatever the producers are calling this film, I wondered to myself, "Out of all of the bad movies I could have seen, couldn't I have at least seen one that was entertaining?" Even if a film is not well made in terms of acting, directing, writing, or what have you, it can at least be fun, and therefore worthwhile. But not only is this film bad in artistic value, it's incredibly boring. For a plot of such thinness, it moves awfully slowly, with little dramatic tension. At the very least, in a low-brow attempt at entertainment, the deaths of the characters could have been cool and/or gory, but the creators of this dreck failed in that department as well.

What does this movie have going for it? Pretty much nothing, unless you get entertainment out of watching Christopher Walken, who is capable of being brilliant, put so little effort into his acting that he falls into self-parody mode (WHY did he decide to do this film anyway?).

I give this film 3/10, because, God help us, there actually have been worse movies made before.

A very interesting story. I think this film could have been so much more with a bigger budget. In my opinion, this was a very marketable movie idea with not enough financial backing. I would have liked to have seen more of Christopher Walken and even more chilling special effects throughout. The dialogue was a little dry, but was saved by the great cast. This movie is worth seeing at least once. It would have been better to see on the big screen but was only released direct-to-video in the U.S.