A heady brew of romance, drama and horror.

Is The Eclipse a ghost story? Not completely. Will it haunt you? Absolutely.

Just as an initial point of clarification, The Eclipse should not be confused with Eclipse, the third installment of The Twilight Saga due out this summer. The Eclipse is a very moving tale of relationships – good, bad, and past. The Eclipse relies on strong performances and a fine script to draw its audience into another world. In other words, The Eclipse achieves everything the first two Twilight films failed to do – and we’re not holding out too much hope for the next one.

Set in Cobh, Ireland, The Eclipse takes place in the small town as writers and fans descend on the hamlet for an annual book festival. Local teacher and widower Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds) is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the nightly disturbances that interrupt his sleep. It’s almost as if his dying father-in-law is visiting his house in the middle of the night as a specter. Struggling to care for the old man and shelter his children from the odd occurrences, Farr is unprepared for the friendship that slowly blossoms with a beautiful writer, Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), whose interest in Farr shifts from the astral plane to a more corporal level.

Unfortunately for Morelle, she’s also dealing with the fall-out from a bad one-night stand with fellow writer Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn), who rivals Hemingway when it comes to hitting the bottle. It’s the triangle formed by these three – Farr, Morelle, and Holden – that creates an energy that crackles and flares.

Written and directed by Conor McPherson, The Eclipse is a heady brew of romance, drama and horror. While the juxtaposition between the real and the surreal doesn’t entirely work, it certainly succeeds in surprising ways. Perhaps because McPherson never dwells too long on whether Farr is truly seeing into another world, or if it’s all a figment of his imagination. Instead, it’s a question of what’s real and what isn’t. Sometimes that means a sexual fantasy is not real; sometimes that means the demon jumping out of the dark is. When it comes to ghosts and love, reality is relative.

The film almost demands to be assessed as two different strands woven together. As a relationship drama, the strength of the story rests with the actors. Hinds’ Farr is both strong enough to face his ghosts while also being emotionally vulnerable. When Farr tentatively explores a relationship with Morelle, Hinds brings a school-boy nervousness to the part, capturing the man who reclaimed a mantle of sexual innocence after losing his wife. Opposite him, Hjejle is equally strong as the writer caught between two men. When an already bad situation deteriorates more, Hjejle proves that Morelle is no shrinking violet.

It’s Quinn, however, who looks like he’s having the most fun. Holden is a nasty drunk, a jealous lover, and a jackass through and through. Holden is the type of pompous prick who always gets his way; that Farr and Morelle seem impervious to his charms and threats is incomprehensible to him. Quinn swaggers through the part with the right amount of cocky aplomb.

On the horror side, the make-up and special effects are pretty amateur, but the end result still makes you gasp. Admittedly some of the scenes are of the jump-out-of-the-dark variety, but they’re used sparingly and with great efficiency. Just when the stirring soundtrack lulls you into Farr’s daydream, a rotting corpse will appear to drag you back to hell.

Ultimately it’s the film’s final moments that perfectly meld the two strands into one, elevating the entire story to the next level of pathos. It will take your breath away and remind you that even though an eclipse temporarily plunges you into darkness, it’s going to pass.