Trance

...these are the words that came to mind after watching 1998's "THE ETERNAL Kiss of the Mummy," originally titled "Trance" and written & directed by Michael Almereyda. The story is about an alcoholic couple who travel to the wife's country manor in Ireland, supposedly to sober up and give their son the opportunity to meet her ailing grandmother. They discover that her weird uncle (Christopher Walken) has a 2000 year-old mummy of a Druid witch in the basement, which he's curiously trying to revive!

This is Gothic horror in the modern day and struck me as a Hammer flick if it were released in more current times. Alison Elliott is fetching in the starring role of the alcoholic wife. You can tell she has a sweet figure, but you'll only catch a glimpse here or there (not that I'd want to see nudity or sleaze; I'm just saying that there's a way to film beautiful women like Alison and this movie doesn't deliver enough on this front, but it does a bit).

"THE ETERNAL" is not your typical modern horror schlock. It doesn't shoot for conventional horror and gore, but it IS pretty creepy in a Gothic sense. I saw "Big Bad Wolf" (2006) before I viewed this one and, although "Big Bad Wolf" is thrilling and ultra-gory, it's not scary, mainly because the filmmakers & cast cop a semi-campy vibe. "THE ETERNAL," by contrast, plays it completely straight and the foggy Irish moors & centuries-old mansion add to the haunting ambiance.

There's also a quality soundtrack with a few stand-out alternative rock numbers, like the one that plays during the end credits, "My Head Becomes the Sky" by Tara Baoth Mooney.

Anyway, there's a Gothic beauty to the movie, which makes it a pleasure just to watch even if the story is "sluggish," as some criticize. It's clear that the writer/director was aiming for art more than common horror thrills. I'd compare it to "The Mothman Prophecies" (2002) in this sense, albeit not as good. It was limited by an obvious modest budget, which shows through here and there with awkward, amateurish filmmaking.

After viewing, I reflected on the seemingly nonsensical story, particularly the perplexing events in the third act, and certain things started to make sense: This is only a story about a Druid witch coming back to life on the surface; and all that might be figurative. It's really about a woman in bondage to alcoholism who comes face-to-face with her lower nature, her self-destructive side (her "id" or "flesh"), not to mention confronting her incestuous uncle, and trying to prevail. Going back to her heritage, her roots, enables her to see WHY she turned to alcohol for succor in the first place.

In essence, this is a Gothic tale about the purging of one's fleshly demons.

The film runs 95 minutes and was shot in Connemara & Dublin, Ireland; New York; and Miami Beach, Florida.

GRADE: B-/C+

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.

Beautiful looking and sedately handled, but immensely muddled independent art house horror feature by writer / director Michael Almereyda. Kind of similar in style to his film "Najda" four years earlier, which I don't think so highly of (other than the excellent soundtrack that accompanied it).

Nora and Jim (who are alcoholics) along with their son leave America and head to Ireland to visit Nora's grandmother. Despite the advice of their doctor not to go, as Nora one night with Jim got on the drink and she ended up falling down some stairs leaving her with a minor concussion. When getting there, she meets her uncle where he takes her down the basement to show her a decomposed body which he believes to a centuries old druid witch. Could this be the connections to the headaches and visions plaguing Nora's mind, as she'll find out when the witch is revived.

"Trance" is a touch better, but still engulfed by similar problems and nonetheless keeps the same positives. Again this atypically brooding fable is not for everyone, but it managed to hold my attention and I found the direction less concerned with its distracting artsy mechanics (than say in "Nadja")… although they're still evident. There are some delirious images, consisting of jaded visions rocking the main protagonist's mind. These stylised passages hold a certain arresting, if haunting charge. However this is when it's not in its nauseating head spin of mangled ideas. While the plot has a slight structure and little narrative drive, it's stretched out by its unfocused fabricated episodic developments with its dry, upfront and moody trimmings. Every one of these characters / including the witch / monster of the piece are damaged, but still humane vessels in the search of something to make them complete. Secrets are buried, to only be awoken.

It's messy and meanders, but strangely alluring like caught in a drunken, abstract state. I put it down to the performances. A breathtaking Alison Elliot (in dual roles) and narky Jared Harris acquit themselves to their lead roles. Lois Smith holds strong. Christopher Walken looking rather weary goes about things in a sober, but underlining twisted manner. Also Jason Millar's inclusion is merely a throwaway cameo with an amusing line. Almereyda's slickly calculative direction is switched on, making good use of the lush backdrop consisting of a stunning beach line and the Gothic interiors of mansion that the enclosed action mostly takes place in. Intimate photography is sharply engineered and well-intended. The brilliant soundtrack is notable with it tunes (that are perfect choices), and the music score is clinically alienating but whimsical in flight.

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.

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.