I thought Ron Howard couldn’t get any darker than his 2003 Western The Missing, but with his latest Eden he comes pretty close.
This is a true story and Howard’s film, a 15-year passion project of his to bring to the screen, follows the real details fairly closely, something easy to check since filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine made a fascinating documentary on the subject in 2014 called The Galapagos Affair: Satan Comes to Eden.
With a sensational cast, a swell exotic location, a bit of violence and a human mystery with no lack of weirdness, Eden is set in the first half of the 1930s, a post-World War I story about some very determined people to pick up stakes in Germany and go off the grid as it were. Their uninhabited island, full of wild animals, insects, a donkey and other distractions, is called Floreana and is located in the Galapagos Islands. Living there, seemingly alone, are self-absorbed writer Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his partner Dore Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), the latter stricken with MS and hoping for a natural cure, but nevertheless a strong woman with other issues to deal with.
Apparently, Ritter’s writing has made its way into mainstream German papers because the “Eden” he describes becomes an attraction for others wanting to start over. That includes war veteran Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Brühl) and his wife Margaret (Sydney Sweeney), who have decided Floreana is the place for their growing family that includes son Harry (Jonathan Tittel) and a baby on the way for very pregnant Margaret. There is no question Friedrich is put off by these arrivals, preferring to have the place to himself for their lifestyle change in living off the elements — and a lot of canned food.
Really disrupting things is the flamboyant arrival of Austrian Baroness Eloise Wehrhorn de Wagner Bosquet (Ana de Armas), accompanied by her two male lovers for a life of debauchery as they hit the beach and swimming hole for some action, particularly between Eloise and Robert Philipson (Toby Wallace, who gets naked a lot), as Rudolf Lorenz (Felix Kammerer) looks pained. She is a real live wire with plans to turn the whole place into a luxury resort. She claims to have ownership and shows the papers to prove it, which of course really adds to the complications.
In this astounding true story, this makeshift community that wanted to commune with nature and free themselves from the real world now find they are at each other’s throats much of the time and at odds with their dreams. It all goes awry and some of them won’t live to tell the tale.
Howard has lucked out to have an extremely hot cast for this one, an ensemble led by Law (who does some brief full frontal nudity himself) as a man with a mind-set to do his own thing even if as a writer he is increasingly agitated. Kirby is a solid presence but someone growing more impatient at this living arrangement by the day. Brühl is always solid, and here very believable as a vet looking to live off the land. Sweeney is the big surprise, deglammed and looking like she just came off the Little House on the Prairie. Her birthing scene is one for the ages involving rabid dogs and very loud screams in vivid close-ups. De Armas is a hoot, a colorful huckster out to seduce, especially effective in a scene where she comes on to a visiting Hollywood director (Richard Roxburgh in a witty performance) who is on to her absurd game.
Eden is the kind of go-for-broke drama studios shy away from (they never used to), which is why Howard had to go the indie route for this one, but he still manages to make a movie that feels big and unique, and one that in the end doesn’t wear out its welcome. Still, it is a bit surprising that it has taken a year since its Toronto Film Festival debut to finally find an American distributor willing to take it on and put it out there. Good for you, Vertical. Hopefully audiences looking for some deliciously challenging adult material will find it.
Producers are Howard, Grazer, Karen Lunder, Stuart Ford, Bill Connor and Patrick Newall.
Title: Eden
Distributor: Vertical
Release date: August 22, 2025
Director: Ron Howard
Screenwriter: Noah Pink
Cast: Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas, Toby Wallace, Felix Kammerer, Jonathan Tittel, Richard Roxburgh
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hrs 9 mins
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