Eclipse
1977·Drama·1h 25m
7.1
★
A bereaved brother is troubled by memories of his twin who died at sea. Having returned to his childhood home, a Christmas celebration with his brother’s widow and her son goes horribly awry, as dark secrets and sibling rivalries return to haunt them - before the past can be laid to rest.
Directed by Simon Perry
Trailer
IMDB
N/A
Cast
Tom Conti
Gay Hamilton
Paul Kermack
Crew
Simon Perry
Director
Simon Perry
Writer
Popular Reviews
2 reviews
Joni
7.0★ · 12/17/25
Not half bad – liked the countryside and all. Not that scary, relatively predictable. Moreso a drama than a horror 🤷♀️
Not half bad – liked the countryside and all. Not that scary, relatively predictable. Moreso a drama than a horror 🤷♀️
Kieran
8.0★ · 04/23/25
Eclipse is a slippery thing. It writhes in your hand like an eel. Just when you think you’ve got it worked out, it slams you with something else.
There are a couple of British curios from the 70s and 80s just like this, Sleepwalker being the first that comes to mind. The acting isn’t especially spellbinding and the seams show like cracks in a pavement. But they’re all the more entrancing because of it. Take the child actor in this, constantly flat and shouty (a la The Appointment). In a more contemporary film, this would grate. Here, like in so many others, it just pulls you deeper into the strange, distended world being conjured up.
There’s so much violence here. Interpersonal rage connecting to natural rage, often viscerally. The sheer force of the sea pummelling into an argument about Christmas turkey. The cold, synthesiser-conjured (that gorgeous score though) winds howling into a toy train derailing. The culmination of it all being a comically haunting monologue about a dead cat. Eclipse doesn’t really bother with action, it barely uses any force. The dynamics come from conversation battling with Mother Nature.
Unreliable narrators are hard to get right. Some films, you can see them a mile off. Here, you don’t quite know who’s narrating. Sure, Tom is the only one who actually knows what happened, but even then he seems less sure of himself than Cleo often does. A half-remembered conversation from each of our players coalesces into a Frankenstein’s monster of a memory. Is that a smile on Tom’s lips as he tells Cleo of Geoffrey’s death? It could be. It may well have been. But I don’t think even Tom can remember if he was smiling or why, indeed, he was crying.
Everything’s so fragmentary in Eclipse. It had me stumped about a rating to give it. Sometimes I was enamoured, others bored, others bemused. It’s perhaps a reflection of the film’s pointed disparity that I feel so torn. The only certainty is Tom’s hand on the tiller, under a briefly moonless sky and Geoffrey being dead. The fact I’ve come away from Eclipse so torn is testament to its power. It’ll be on my mind for a while.
There are a couple of British curios from the 70s and 80s just like this, Sleepwalker being the first that comes to mind. The acting isn’t especially spellbinding and the seams show like cracks in a pavement. But they’re all the more entrancing because of it. Take the child actor in this, constantly flat and shouty (a la The Appointment). In a more contemporary film, this would grate. Here, like in so many others, it just pulls you deeper into the strange, distended world being conjured up.
There’s so much violence here. Interpersonal rage connecting to natural rage, often viscerally. The sheer force of the sea pummelling into an argument about Christmas turkey. The cold, synthesiser-conjured (that gorgeous score though) winds howling into a toy train derailing. The culmination of it all being a comically haunting monologue about a dead cat. Eclipse doesn’t really bother with action, it barely uses any force. The dynamics come from conversation battling with Mother Nature.
Unreliable narrators are hard to get right. Some films, you can see them a mile off. Here, you don’t quite know who’s narrating. Sure, Tom is the only one who actually knows what happened, but even then he seems less sure of himself than Cleo often does. A half-remembered conversation from each of our players coalesces into a Frankenstein’s monster of a memory. Is that a smile on Tom’s lips as he tells Cleo of Geoffrey’s death? It could be. It may well have been. But I don’t think even Tom can remember if he was smiling or why, indeed, he was crying.
Everything’s so fragmentary in Eclipse. It had me stumped about a rating to give it. Sometimes I was enamoured, others bored, others bemused. It’s perhaps a reflection of the film’s pointed disparity that I feel so torn. The only certainty is Tom’s hand on the tiller, under a briefly moonless sky and Geoffrey being dead. The fact I’ve come away from Eclipse so torn is testament to its power. It’ll be on my mind for a while.
Eclipse is a slippery thing. It writhes in your hand like an eel. Just when you think you’ve got it worked out, it slams you with something else.
There are a couple of British curios from the 70s and 80s just like this, Sleepwalker being the first that comes to mind. The acting isn’t especially spellbinding and the seams show like cracks in a pavement. But they’re all the more entrancing because of it. Take the child actor in this, constantly flat and shouty (a la The Appointment). In a more contemporary film, this would grate. Here, like in so many others, it just pulls you deeper into the strange, distended world being conjured up.
There’s so much violence here. Interpersonal rage connecting to natural rage, often viscerally. The sheer force of the sea pummelling into an argument about Christmas turkey. The cold, synthesiser-conjured (that gorgeous score though) winds howling into a toy train derailing. The culmination of it all being a comically haunting monologue about a dead cat. Eclipse doesn’t really bother with action, it barely uses any force. The dynamics come from conversation battling with Mother Nature.
Unreliable narrators are hard to get right. Some films, you can see them a mile off. Here, you don’t quite know who’s narrating. Sure, Tom is the only one who actually knows what happened, but even then he seems less sure of himself than Cleo often does. A half-remembered conversation from each of our players coalesces into a Frankenstein’s monster of a memory. Is that a smile on Tom’s lips as he tells Cleo of Geoffrey’s death? It could be. It may well have been. But I don’t think even Tom can remember if he was smiling or why, indeed, he was crying.
Everything’s so fragmentary in Eclipse. It had me stumped about a rating to give it. Sometimes I was enamoured, others bored, others bemused. It’s perhaps a reflection of the film’s pointed disparity that I feel so torn. The only certainty is Tom’s hand on the tiller, under a briefly moonless sky and Geoffrey being dead. The fact I’ve come away from Eclipse so torn is testament to its power. It’ll be on my mind for a while.
There are a couple of British curios from the 70s and 80s just like this, Sleepwalker being the first that comes to mind. The acting isn’t especially spellbinding and the seams show like cracks in a pavement. But they’re all the more entrancing because of it. Take the child actor in this, constantly flat and shouty (a la The Appointment). In a more contemporary film, this would grate. Here, like in so many others, it just pulls you deeper into the strange, distended world being conjured up.
There’s so much violence here. Interpersonal rage connecting to natural rage, often viscerally. The sheer force of the sea pummelling into an argument about Christmas turkey. The cold, synthesiser-conjured (that gorgeous score though) winds howling into a toy train derailing. The culmination of it all being a comically haunting monologue about a dead cat. Eclipse doesn’t really bother with action, it barely uses any force. The dynamics come from conversation battling with Mother Nature.
Unreliable narrators are hard to get right. Some films, you can see them a mile off. Here, you don’t quite know who’s narrating. Sure, Tom is the only one who actually knows what happened, but even then he seems less sure of himself than Cleo often does. A half-remembered conversation from each of our players coalesces into a Frankenstein’s monster of a memory. Is that a smile on Tom’s lips as he tells Cleo of Geoffrey’s death? It could be. It may well have been. But I don’t think even Tom can remember if he was smiling or why, indeed, he was crying.
Everything’s so fragmentary in Eclipse. It had me stumped about a rating to give it. Sometimes I was enamoured, others bored, others bemused. It’s perhaps a reflection of the film’s pointed disparity that I feel so torn. The only certainty is Tom’s hand on the tiller, under a briefly moonless sky and Geoffrey being dead. The fact I’ve come away from Eclipse so torn is testament to its power. It’ll be on my mind for a while.