Eden

There have been many great stories told in both novels and movies, but some of the best are the ones that actually happened. Real-life events bring an extra layer of emotional depth because they could happen to anyone—or at least feel like they could. In the 1930s, on Floreana Island in the Galapagos, a group of European settlers arrived searching for a new life. What most of them found wasn’t that at all—but their experiences gave us one hell of a story.

On this island, Dr. Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife Dore (Vanessa Kirby) settle in to escape society while Ritter works on a book about creating a new one. Word of their unconventional life spreads, drawing other families looking for their own escape. The first to arrive are Heinz (Daniel Brühl), his wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney), and their son Harry (Jonathan Tittel), who hope the island will help Harry’s health. While the Whitmers are already an inconvenience for Ritter, things escalate further with the arrival of the flamboyant Baroness (Ana de Armas). She comes with her servants and an ambitious plan to build a luxury hotel. Needless to say, this clashes with Ritter’s vision, and tensions quickly grow among the three parties. It doesn’t take long before human nature takes over. The settlers begin to wonder whether the island is truly big enough for everyone.

Written by Noah Pink, Eden is less about adventure and more about power struggles, narcissism, and survival in a world poisoned by its own inhabitants. While it includes survival elements, the story digs deeper into the psychological and social undertones. The true events were already the subject of the documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, and this dramatization leans into those same tensions—strangers forced to endure not just the elements, but each other. Director Ron Howard and co-writer Noah Pink even sprinkle in moments of black humor, giving the story some levity amid its darker turns.

Eden is ultimately about how trying to escape society can sometimes unleash the very things you were running from in the first place. The cast is strong, though the performances are often exaggerated. Law and Armas stand out, but the mix of tones from the rest of the ensemble doesn’t always gel. There are flashes of brilliance, especially as the story builds toward moments of full-blown insanity, but then the screenplay shifts its focus, placing Margret at the center. That choice sidelines the more compelling threads, leaving a story that feels like less than the sum of its parts.

In the end, Eden is an interesting exploration of what people will do to survive. It overcomes its flaws just enough to deliver a memorable story—though the movie itself lands somewhere in the middle: not great, not terrible, but solidly “not too bad.”