TORONTO, Canada—Company breeds misery in Eden, paterfamilias, doom has become an inevitability for at least some of these foolhardy folks.
Howard gradually builds menace through sideways glances, cutting remarks, testy confrontations, and snapshots of hawks catching prey in their talons and crabs crawling over skeletons. Mathias Herndl’s sunburnt cinematography paints Floreana as an outpost of harsh sand, sharp rock, and tough soil, its desolation at once breathtaking and intimidating.
Eden doesn’t strain its Old Testament undercurrents, and it wisely spreads its condemnation around. The film is, at heart, a portrait of the invariable schisms that come from asking strangers to coexist, and in that regard, it’s a scathing indictment of Friedrich’s ideas, which are eventually revealed to be sub-Nietzschean notions that are predicated on (and justified by) the unnecessary mess he’s made for himself and his compatriots.
Eden is too unadventurous to drum up much suspense, and it never wholly resolves the tension between its characters’ daft choices and its conclusion’s quasi-celebration of Margret. Nonetheless, its straightforward approach—replete with convincing production and set design—keeps it consistently compelling.
It’s also the beneficiary of Law and de Armas’ considerable star power, he tapping into Friedrich’s fervor and the charisma that makes his ambitious plans so alluring, and she a hurricane of sex, cunning, and shady villainy. Thanks to them, the film proves an engrossing story of individual dreams and manias, communal frictions and failings, and the fact that sometimes, Hell really is other people.
