The Eternal is a straight to video movie directed by Michael Almereyda, who was clearly being retroactively punished for Nadja, a modern take on vampires, which I did not enjoy in the theaters, but Nadja enjoyed critical acclaim. Almereyda’s films are usually good—Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke and The Experimenter, but I watched The Eternal for a brief appearance by Christopher Walken.
The Eternal is ostensibly about a married couple and their son who go to Ireland against doctor’s orders, then when they arrive in Ireland, they visit her family against a former friend’s advice and then when they arrive at her home, they realize that everyone was right, but it is too late. In the end, the wife is forced to confront her past traumas, her present issues and ambivalence about being a daughter, a mother and a wife. The Eternal uses supernatural horror to tackle issues of identity, but what makes it effective is the choices of what is explicitly said and what is not said, but can be surmised from the film.
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There is a meta and micro issue of mothers and sons not trusting their biological mother because of harm to another sibling and choosing an imposter mother who is actually harmful. It is not explicitly said, but the wife’s family may be descendants of the Druid witch whose body is excavated from the bog. Every blood descendant, males and females of all ages, including the wife’s son, seem to have visions and powers. There are at least five mothers in The Eternal, but all have helped and harmed their children. There is the idea that there is no such thing as a good or bad mother or woman, but the male descendants’ understanding of this does not help in their relationship to their mother.
The first mother that The Eternal introduces is the main character, Nora, who is an alcoholic, does not notice that her son is clearly experiencing painful visions, playing with sharp objects and loudly confesses to her husband that she had an abortion in a room adjacent to her son. Nora’s son rejects her for the Druid witch, who looks exactly like Nora. I would normally dismiss his behavior as stupid, but in the context of this film, while Nora loves him, the Druid witch actually clings to him. In order to heal that relationship, Nora becomes the embodiment of self-sacrifice. The child never says a word yet most of this is communicated without any exposition.
The second mother that The Eternal introduces is the grandmother though she is introduced late in the film. We mostly hear about her from her son, Nora’s uncle, the professor, who is played by Walken. He pins all the crazy stuff that he does (breaking the phone) on her and gaslights the grandmother by pretending that Nora is not there, and she is hearing things. When Nora asks to see her grandmother, he actually takes her to see the excavated Druid witch, but this act is not a complete lie because of the implicit relationship. Unfortunately he is attracted to the Druid witch. Later on, we find out that the grandmother helped the IRA and kept explosives in the house, which caused his sister and Nora’s mother’s death. He resents her for lying-possibly about their legacy, but it is never explicitly clear if there is yet another issue. The grandmother tries to stop her son from resurrecting the witch. Side note: Walken with an Irish accent is ridiculous, but the acting between him and Lois Smith, who plays the grandmother, is really good, and she never says a word to him.
The third mother is only seen in the grandmother and Nora’s visions. She is Nora’s mother-a source of trauma for Nora, a repressed memory. When Nora’s visions of her mother are stronger than the visions of the Druid witch’s past, it is only at that point when Nora can face the witch and rescue her son.
The fourth mother is the Druid witch herself. She dies after she gives birth to her baby, but kills one descendant, the uncle, and seeks to obliterate one of her other descendants, Nora, in order to live again.
The fifth and sixth mothers are Ireland (the civil war between the sons who reject her for the UK, and those who don’t) and the Catholic Church. Both act as playing roles in Nora’s past trauma and are backdrops for the conflict. There is the idea of alcohol, specifically Guinness, as mother’s milk, the land dying, the Catholic Church exiling her from her family and relationships. This exile fractures Nora’s identity, which is symbolized by the resurrected witch looking like Nora. There is the Nora that would have existed if she never had to leave, and the Nora who does exist. The Eternal seeks to reconcile the past with the present. Nora keeps her promise to the doctor and makes herself a whole person in an act of extreme self-sacrifice that not only saves her son, but soothes all her past traumas (the loss of her mother, her abortion, her unwanted visions).
The husband is an interesting figure in The Eternal since he unwittingly is the first guy to know what is going on even if he does not consciously realize it. He is the only biological father and husband, an imperfect man who keeps his vows in contrast to the murdered unfaithful Druid witch’s lover. He asks the Uncle’s alleged adopted daughter, Alice, “Will I live,” but it is the question that the audience is silently asking since he is on the threshold of meeting the witch who just killed Walken. He also jokes that the grandmother pushed Nora down the stairs, but in an earlier scene when he was not present, the grandmother mentally pushed the witch who looked like Nora down the stairs. He is the first one to figure out that there are two Noras and is not slightly perturbed by the fact that his wife is making out with her ex-boyfriend. Walken’s character claims that he wants a woman beyond morality, but the husband actually does. He wants a wild woman. He does not even seem too put out by the grandmother, the ex and Nora knocking him out. While he is Nora’s enabler and drinking buddy, he does love her and tries to get her to stop drinking when he thinks that she is in danger. He is also the first person to figure out the Druid witch’s weakness in an attempt to rescue his son. He may be thick, co-dependent and belligerent to everyone except Nora, but he is not linked to the past by blood or heritage so he sees what is happening and is approaching the situation in a completely new way. Everyone else in trapped in a historic tragedy, and he makes it a Shakespearean comedy of errors.
Alcohol is another character in The Eternal. Nora uses it to self-medicate against visions and trauma. The Uncle uses it to disable her and make her vulnerable to the witch. The ex uses it to try to reignite the past. All this alcohol is a disguise for unspoken abuse. The Uncle claims that he adopted an orphan named Alice, who also serves as the narrator of The Eternal, but she is more of a Dickensian servant yet no one questions this. The Uncle basically roofied his niece and made out with her doppelganger, which is hella incesty, especially since her doppelganger may be their ancestor. The Uncle also gaslights and drugs the grandmother. The grandmother unwisely keeps explosives near her family. Nora and her husband neglect their son, who rarely/never talks and may have a speech delay. The problem with alcohol is that it makes you do stupid things like let the woman who passes out drive the car after having a Guinness then no one realizes that you are actually in an unusual and dangerous situation because everything is out of the ordinary in your life.
What I enjoyed, but many viewers may hate, is The Boondocks Saint meets Supernatural quality of The Eternal. Before Nora comes to Ireland and The Eternal starts, the story was already unfolding, but we do not know it until the middle of the film. The land began to die when the Uncle excavated the Druid witch’s body. One of the villagers announces, and I found inexplicably evocative, “Just because there is no garden doesn’t mean there isn’t a gardener.” Ordinary people, including Alice, have already rallied to fight her albeit ineffectually.
Some movies sound stupid, but are actually really good, and some movies have characters that plausibly and self-consciously do stupid things, but it is actually a really good movie. The Eternal is a great movie filled with people who do dumb things, but don’t misclassify it as a dumb movie. The Eternal may feel derivative, but I think that many movies and TV shows actually mined The Eternal for material. The Eternal is an outstanding, but overlooked masterpiece.