‘Eden’: Toronto Review

Dir: Ron Howard. US. 2024. 129mins 

In a film littered with monstrous behaviour and murderous acts, what is perhaps most shocking about Eden is the director behind it. In Ron Howard’s work, the best of humanity usually shines brightest but, with this intense psychological thriller, he reveals a different side, charting the growing resentments on a remote island in the Galapagos populated by a handful of people who do not wish to share this idyllic spot with one another. Inspired by actual events which took place almost a century ago, the picture gives Jude Law and Ana de Armas an opportunity to be unapologetically rotten, resulting in a grim, feverish film that feels touched by madness. 

Howard fails to modulate the wickedness and, at over two hours, the picture becomes monotonous and unwieldy

Eden premieres as a Gala Presentation in Toronto, and the film features an impressive supporting cast that includes Sydney Sweeney, Vanessa Kirby and Howard’s Rush star Daniel Brühl. UK and key international territiories went to Amazon Prime at Cannes, but the US rights on this key feature were still available going into TIFF.

In 1932, Heinz (Brühl) and Margret Witmer (Sweeney) journey to Floreana on the Galapagos Islands, where they wish to meet Friedrich (Law), a German doctor and philosopher who believes humanity is doomed. Living alone with his sullen lover Dore (Kirby), Friedrich has decamped to Floreana to start his idealised new society — and does not want to be disturbed by the Witmers, whom he dismisses as tourists. But both families will soon encounter another interloper, the Baroness (de Armas), who has designs on building a luxury hotel on the beach.

Drawing from conflicting reports from the island’s survivors, Noah Pink’s screenplay introduces us to Floreana’s treacherous terrain and mostly miserable inhabitants. Save for the kindly Witmers, everyone else we meet in Eden is self-centred, manipulative or outright evil. Heinz and Margret came to the Galapagos because they believed in Friedrich’s vision of building a utopia after the horrors of the First World War, but the married couple’s interactions with the pretentious doctor quickly make it clear that his idealism has curdled into solipsism and self-righteousness. Friedrich wanted the seclusion to write his manifesto but it may have also driven him slightly insane, and Law makes a meal out of Friedrich’s haughty nature.

When the Baroness arrives, de Armas gives the picture a wicked jolt, playing thischaracter as a flirty schemer who enjoys charming the men around her. It’s a theatrical performance — we have no doubt she’s not as posh as she lets on — and the Oscar-nominated actress relishes the character’s shameless behaviour. While many of Eden’s participants will eventually get in touch with their darker natures, the Baroness is up to no good from the start, quickly locating insecurities and exploiting them. At its best, Eden ripples with an unhinged lunatics-running-the-asylum maliciousness, and de Armas personifies the picture’s fixation on its irredeemable souls, its sense of a society quickly devolving into chaos and hedonism.

Whether it’s Mathias Herndl’s grey cinematography or Hans Zimmer’s mournful score, the film hints early on that terrible consequences await these people as their halfhearted attempts to coexist quickly go by the wayside. Howard embraces the story’s demented bent, offering the viewer kinky sex and tawdry threesomes — not to mention a level of brutality unique to his oeuvre. If Eden has any glimpse of a happy ending, it is hard-earned and haunted by all that come before.

Unfortunately, Howard fails to modulate this wickedness and, at over two hours, the picture becomes monotonous and unwieldy. Indeed, the malicious proceedings lose their power to unnerve, to diminishing returns. As twisted as the characters are, their psychology is rarely explored with finesse. These people may be bad but their rottenness comes across as arbitrary, which works against the filmmaker’s Lord Of The Flies-like portrait of humanity eating itself. For once in a Ron Howard film, there are few nice guys to be found — but his dance with the devil suggests that, although there is something energising about this change of pace, he can’t quite connect with the evil that permeates his film.