Eden
Vertical Entertainment | Release Date: August 22, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
10
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
The PlaylistAnkit JhunjhunwalaSep 13, 2024
All told, “Eden” is deeply engrossing throughout and is a compelling look at nasty, vicious characters cracking under trying conditions. The fact that all of this really happened makes this bizarre tale that much more intriguing. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 9, 2024
The pressures of the untamed setting, combined with the inability of these characters to ever trust each other, results in an over-the-top melodrama that gets loopier as it goes on. But it pulls us along, too. Read full review
80
TheWrapChase HutchinsonSep 9, 2024
If Howard and Sweeney can make movies together like this all the time, may neither of them ever stop. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comNell MinowAug 22, 2025
Cinematographer Mathias Herndl shows us that Floreana is not a postcard-pretty island paradise. Still, a harsh and unyielding setting, and Hans Zimmer’s score evokes increasing uneasiness as the story builds to a climax of violence and chaos. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerAug 21, 2025
Eden winds up yoking Howard’s more domesticated movies with his thwarted-adventure narratives. The suspense lies in whether certain characters will figure out whether they’re on a bold, one-off exploration or the cusp of a sustainable new life—and whether humanity on the whole is any good at telling them apart. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 20, 2025
The only weakness of the movie is that, because it’s a true story, it can’t rearrange the order of events for maximum drama. Thus, what is essentially the climax of the film comes about three quarters in, and the rest of it, while never less than interesting, feels like falling action. The good news is that Sweeney and Kirby get their best scenes, respectively, in this last section of the movie. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 9, 2024
No film about the utter demise of a supposed utopia — a real one, to boot! — and the utter infallibility of human beings should be this fun, but we’re lucky this one is. Read full review
75
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 8, 2024
Never dull if also only intermittently surprising, it’s another of the director’s sturdy star-studded genre efforts. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleAug 26, 2025
The result may not be terribly illuminating about the (sub)human condition, despite the shout-outs to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Eden is probably closer to an expensive reality show about mismatched survivalists. But as August fare goes, it’s a sticky, sweaty hoot, well cast and paced like a disreputable beach read, even if you might sporadically wish Werner Herzog had gotten first crack at this material. Read full review
70
The New York TimesGlenn KennyAug 21, 2025
It’s a little surprising that these proceedings are led by the director Ron Howard, since this subject matter is more perverse than anything he has set his sights on before. The actors are up to the task, however. Read full review
70
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiSep 19, 2024
The true story aspect will leave audiences wanting to dig deeper into the two disparate accounts, but even if they don’t, Howard’s Eden is a compulsory watch that does enough to satisfy. Read full review
70
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 9, 2024
For a director like Howard, whose work can sometimes be a bit too sterile, Eden is a curious experiment in search of a purpose. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 25, 2025
Howard stages several powerful sequences, including a harrowing childbirth scene, but the film falters in its final act, losing focus and stumbling toward an anticlimactic conclusion. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 22, 2025
Eden isn’t the subtlest allegory about life in troubled times, but Howard rarely makes a bad film and he hasn’t here. From its eyes-averting grimness to its eye-rolling obviousness and “inevitability, Eden is a parable that plays. Read full review
63
The Associated PressItzel LunaAug 20, 2025
The film lacks depth in exploring questions of morality and human nature while depicting Ritter’s lofty goals to save humanity. Read full review
60
LooperReuben BaronSep 10, 2024
Eden will attract interest for its strong ensemble and for its intriguingly dark true story. It's an entertaining enough way to pass two hours, but it's also not a film I expect people will be thinking about long after they see it. Read full review
58
The Film StageChristopher SchobertSep 9, 2024
Eden wants to leave the audience brimming with respect for the survival skills of Floreana’s inhabitants. Unfortunately, the endless scenes of discord are what will be remembered. This is a script problem that’s never solved. Howard’s ambition is to be applauded, but that alone is not enough to make for successful cinema. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 9, 2024
Howard, working from a script by Noah Pink, has a lot of plates to keep spinning, including the story's wild swings between outrageous outbursts, sometimes played for laughs, and dog-eat-dog tension. Inevitably, with such an act, a few plates are bound to break. Read full review
57
Paste MagazineRory DohertyAug 21, 2025
The Galápagos affair has been shrouded in mystery for 90 years, but Eden doesn’t offer us convincing insight. It’s film built from obvious assumptions about what happened there, gained from a frustrating distance. Read full review
50
The New YorkerJustin ChangAug 27, 2025
It’s hard not to conclude that, in the case of “Eden,” Howard simply isn’t mean enough for this material. His temperament is better suited to stories of heroic resilience than ones of greed, bloodlust, and cynical isolationism. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesAug 21, 2025
Eden shows humanity at its worst, but without reflecting much on the why of it all – a Lord of the Flies analogue that concludes not with a gut punch but a tidy historical coda. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineRoss McIndoeAug 19, 2025
As the plot progresses, the film appears increasingly adrift, discordantly sliding between farce, satire, and murder mystery. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 9, 2024
Unfortunately, Howard fails to modulate this wickedness and, at over two hours, the picture becomes monotonous and unwieldy. Indeed, the malicious proceedings lose their power to unnerve, to diminishing returns. Read full review
40
EmpireJohn NugentNov 3, 2025
There’s trouble in this paradise: bleak without much of a point to make and bloody without any particular reason, this is an odd attempt at satire that takes a fascinating slice of real-life stranger-than-fiction history and somehow makes it less interesting. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 9, 2024
It’s all too silly and the writing too hokey for us to keep up and by the end, truly care about who survives or not. Read full review
30
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 9, 2024
While there’s no denying that Howard has made the ultimate movie that’s not in his wheelhouse, what’s most different about it isn’t the eccentric subject matter. It’s that Howard got so immersed in the subject, so possessed by it, so lost in it that he forgot to do what he can usually do in his sleep: tell a relatable story. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedAug 28, 2025
Like Steven Spielberg, [Howard]'s films are usually polished, coherent, and suitable for all ages. His obsession with Eden delivers none of those things, and it’s so vile, pretentious and confusing in style over substance that a lot of it is downright unwatchable. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithAug 21, 2025
The entire movie comes across as awkward, even flailing to hold our interest. Read full review
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