Eden tells the story of an American soccer team on the way home from the World Cup. Their plane crashes, stranding them on a remote island in the middle of nowhere. They don’t have a lot of supplies, and nothing that can sustain them seems to grow on the island. Soon, the team has to make really tough choices concerning the injured people in the group. The team basically falls into two factions; one led by the ruthless Andreas (Ethan Peck), and one led by the more compassionate Slim (Nate Parker).
Eden is like Lord of the Flies with adult soccer players instead of young boys. The film’s essential assertion is that pushed hard enough, even a group seemingly as united as a team will fall into anarchy. This is a valid argument to make, but the film doesn’t do it particularly well. It isn’t really smart enough to make the points it wants to make, the characters written so broadly that it becomes difficult to recognize them as human. In the end, the film wanders into ludicrous territory, before latching on to a conclusion that pretty much renders the entire thing moot.
The film boils down to the conflict between the two main characters, which is first expressed as a bit of jealousy on the team for one of them being portrayed in the media as the star. This is an interesting seed, but it doesn’t really bloom into anything substantial. The film keeps externalizing their conflict, making it more about how some unreasonable elements in their situation take them into different directions. The most compelling bits of the film have these characters making tough choices as a group, voicing different opinions about how they can best maximize the probability of survival. The worst parts are just pissing contests triggered by secondary characters that exist solely for that purpose.
And so they fight over a girl, who is little more than a prize. There is a character on the island that isn’t at all thinking about the safety of the group, but is still somehow portrayed as more worthy of sympathy than those who are going hungry. Whatever else the film might be talking about, it basically boils down to the relationship between these two characters. It feels like we should feel some loss when these two split up, but the film goes so hard portraying one of them as a crazy villain that there isn’t anything to mourn.
The film shoots its island setting pretty well, and though the few action scenes get a little dark, it all looks pretty good. The acting is serviceable. Ethan Peck doesn’t really exhibit anything beyond a good brood, but there is some intensity to him that makes him more than your average bland male. He’s certainly a tad more interesting than Nate Parker, who doesn’t quite have the assuredness that his character needs. But the two are better than the sum of their parts, their scenes together giving the film a measure of compelling chemistry.
Eden has a pretty good premise going for it, and it could have spun off into any number of intriguing directions. But it never really gets there. It doesn’t really make any sense for these two to be taking such extreme positions, especially given what they encounter on this island. The movie isn’t able to create a situation that justifies the conflict, the whole thing being boiled down to a hazy rivalry that really doesn’t apply anymore. And in the end, it doesn’t even really matter. None of their choices is what leads to the eventual resolution. It was all just a bunch of nonsense.
My Rating:
