Eden Review: Jude Law, Ana De Armas And Sydney Sweeney’s Ferocious Survival Thriller Has Me Pondering Upsetting Truths About Human Nature

I don’t know about you, but the world our society has concocted can get seriously exhausting to live in day-to-day. Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love being human and getting to live exactly where I am in our world – but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve daydreamed before about a life “off the grid.” I imagine myself really connecting with myself in nature, gardening and homesteading becoming more than just a hobby I have on a Nintendo Switch game, and leaving bills at the door. But then I watched Ron Howard’s Eden, and I was met with a very real truth I’m often ignorant of during these fantasies, which is that we cannot escape from human nature no matter where we go.

Eden reminds me why we all find ourselves part of a society that has a lot of baggage. While it may not feel like it to us all the time, we are more comfortable and better off than we have ever been. (For example, as we often forget, sewers used to run down the streets?!!) Director Ron Howard’s latest biographical passion project follows the story of a few groups of people who decided to leave society between WWI and WWII to live on the isle of Floreana in the Galapagos. Through a tense two-hour ride, the true story exposes natural flaws of human nature... and it was impactful enough that I definitely won't be pulling the trigger on off-the-grid living anytime soon.

Eden serves up a solid tale (based on a true story) to examine human nature at its darkest.

The movie starts with a German family consisting of Margret and Heinz Wittmer (played by Sydney Sweeney and Daniel Brühl) and Heinz’s son Harry (Jonathan Tittel). The clan lands on Floreana in 1929 after growing tired of their life in society where they’ve had to choose between feeding themselves and paying rent, as Margret suggests. Once they get there, they are quickly eager to introduce themselves to the only other settlers they know to be there: Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby). They made the newspapers for fleeing Germany and inspired the Wittmers to do the same thing.

Friedrich and Dora are immediately peeved that their life of isolation on Floreana has been disrupted by three more settlers sharing the island with them. Dr. Ritter is hellbent on spending his days sitting at his typewriter writing the next great philosophical novel about what it means to be human, and he doesn’t like distractions. But the Wittmers prove to give them their space much of the time as they settle on the other side of the isle. However, an even more annoying problem soon sails on the horizon when Ana de Armas’ Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn and her colleagues also land ashore with plans to build her own luxury hotel on the coast, but very little survival and settler skills to show for it.

Early in the movie, Ritter suggests that human nature’s cycle can be described by "democracy, fascism then war", and it's actually fascinating to see how having three groups of settlers on Floreana slowly escalates into running this cycle through, even though each party had every intention of living outside of society. Howard and screenplay writer Noah Pink’s adaptation of this story serves as a movie with a staunch ability to examine how humans get in our own way, and have a tendency to cause conflict, even in a self-proclaimed “Eden”.

Ron Howard’s direction is thrilling, tense and places a large focus on its ruthless, often unlikeable characters.

The legendary director, who has been especially well known over the years for helming movies based true stories, sets the scene for Floreana by putting us in the shoes of the Wittmers as they adjust to life in the Galapagos. From finding a water source to capturing their own food, Howard immerses the audience into the woes of settling away from society. Even more tension is naturally added to the situation once we find out that Sweeney’s Margret is expecting her first child.

The birthing scene that comes out of Eden is one of the most stressful scenes I’ve seen this year. It's so increasingly intense that you’d think you were watching a horror movie. It most certainly helps that the great Hans Zimmer composed the score, and it's shot inviting palpable elements of nature, the film having been made on location in Australia. While the storyline isn’t working particularly hard to get you to root for any of the other characters besides the Wittmers (that will certainly put off some people), and the murky paths they can go on can weigh on the audience, it also serves the greater good of the work to expose a perspective on human nature – perhaps in an effort to start our own conversations about who we think we inherently are.

The all-star cast deliver here, even if their accents aren’t always on point.

Along with Ron Howard’s dark direction of Eden, its talented cast helps build up the growing tensions with their character work that successfully (for the most part) gets each of the actors outside of their movie star personas we know them for. Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby are particularly interesting as a couple that feels lived-in, and a slow-burning contempt for one another brews after they've spent every waking moment with the other on the island. Law’s inherent charm helps ground this hermit-like ego-centric take on Dr. Ritter while Kirby’s harsh spiral is understated but absolutely a highlight of Eden. (Between this and Fantastic Four, Kirby is having an excellent 2025 of being a scene-stealer.)

Ana de Armas takes on sort of a villain role in Eden, but I don't want to give away to what extent. Similarly to Law, her likability helps round out her arc, and makes one sit up rather than instantly write her off, but once she does show her cards, the Baroness does come off as more one-dimensional than I would have liked. Sweeney ends up needing to anchor the movie a lot more than I expected, and this gives her the space to do so with the talented Brühl by her side. But some of the cast issues with the German accent, and their star power does remove some of the illusion this film is trying to immerse us in.

All in all, we've seen a better character study of this ilk with the latest season of The White Lotus, but even still, Eden does something I am always looking for when I watch movies. It challenges my own beliefs about the off-the-grid fantasy, and it introduced me to a true story that I had never known prior to watching it. While it's full of unlikable characters and runs a bit long, entertaining storytelling is always in the center of its filmmaking. It's a worthwhile watch as a study of human nature, and another strong and character-driven work from Ron Howard.