Movie Review: EDEN

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 22nd, 2025 / 02:14 AM

Rating: R
Stars: Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney, Jonathan Tittle, Toby Wallace, Felix Kammerer, Richard Roxburgh
Writer: Noah Pink, story by Noah Pink & Ron Howard
Director: Ron Howard
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment

Release Date: August 22, 2025

A fair amount of research – possibly as much as that done by the filmmakers – seems required to gauge the verisimilitude of EDEN. On one hand, not only is the film based on historical events, but there is closing footage of the real people involved. On the other hand, the movie concludes with the standard disclaimer about everyone being fictitious and how no resemblance to persons living or dead should be inferred.

Best then to take EDEN on its own terms. In 1929, Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his romantic partner Dore Strauch (Vanessa Kirby) move from Germany to the otherwise uninhabited-by-humans Galapagos island of Floreana. Friedrich is here to write his manifesto that he and Dore are both sure will change civilization when it is finished and published. Dore also hopes that this place will cure, or at least relieve, her multiple sclerosis. Both are extremely content to leave the rest of the world behind.

Unfortunately for their solitude, news of their success at living in the wild has reached Europe. The Wittmer family, husband Heinz (Daniel Bruhl), younger wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney), and Heinz’s preteen son Harry (Jonathan Tittle) by Heinz’s first marriage, arrive on the island wanting emulating Friedrich and Dore. Additionally, Harry has suffered from tuberculosis; Heinz couldn’t afford a sanitarium for the boy, and he and Margret anticipate that the climate will cleanse him, as it is reportedly doing for Dore.

To say that Friedrich and Dore aren’t happy about the Wittmers’ presence would be an understatement. Friedrich does point Heinz toward a source of fresh water, but otherwise refuses to even be sociable, much less cooperative.

However, the two households are joined in mutual dismay by yet more new neighbors. A young woman who introduces herself as the Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas), accompanied by her two devoted lovers (Toby Wallace, Felix Kammerer) plus a manservant, announces her plans to build an exclusive tourist hotel on the beach. Her sense of entitlement is even more breathtaking than the scenery.

This wouldn’t be the makings of a harmonious community in the best of circumstances. With weather, wild animals, and shortages of supplies, morale and morals are severely tested.

Director Ron Howard, who crafted the film’s story with screenwriter Noah Pink, gets the best from both his environment and his actors, with especially multi-level performances from Law, de Armas and Kirby. Bruhl is sympathetically and convincingly desperate and Sweeney puts a skin of simplicity over a spine of steel as Margret. Richard Roxburgh shows up briefly but impressively as the most even-keeled soul in EDEN.

We are in suspense as to both what will happen and how, and we couldn’t ask for more natural beauty, as well as unexpected nature-bred threats.

So, what’s the problem? While Friedrich and the Baroness are both fully realized as individuals on screen, he is an arrogant, hypocritical misanthrope, and she is a sociopath. While both have vulnerabilities, and each gets a scene or two of showing humanity, they are overall so actively unpleasant and willfully oblivious to anything they don’t like that we empathize perhaps more than we should with others who don’t want to spend time with them.

Viewers who are fascinated by individual awfulness may find this an added bonus. For others, it makes EDEN a somewhat lopsided viewing experience – we’re eager (if dreading) to know what happens next but simultaneously fatigued by putting up with Friedrich and the Baroness.

It’s not that riveting films with repellent protagonists can’t be made – they range from CITIZEN KANE to THE GODFATHER to THERE WILL BE BLOOD and beyond. But those central figures have something magnetic at their core, whether it’s charm, intelligence or conviction. The more we get to know Friedrich and the Baroness, the more we observe them for their effect rather than for themselves.

EDEN emerges as a compelling tale, but we have to endure some bad company to get to its revelations.

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