2025 will not be remembered as the Summer of Sydney Sweeney. The 27-year-old starlet consistently finds herself trending on social media, typically as the butt of the joke. Whether it is weaponizing her sex appeal by selling a soap made from her bath water, or her tone-deaf casual engagement in eugenics theory to sell American Eagle jeans, Sweeney’s controversies increase her exposure, but not enough for audiences to go out and see her newest film: Eden, which suffered embarrassingly bad box-office debuts.
Despite a Hollywood legend at the helm in Ron Howard, a stacked all-star ensemble including Vanessa Kirby, Jude Law, and Ana de Armas, and a more positive than not critical reception, the film only went on to gross a million on a $55 million budget.
While Sweeney is not to blame, her name recognition provided little to the film’s bottom line. Maybe it’s fatigue. Maybe the studio is to blame. Had the bad clout of news cycles not been surrounding Ms. Sweeney, maybe people would have focused on her actual performance in Eden, which is nothing short of sensational.
Eden tells the true story of the Wittmers, a German couple with a son and a child on the way, who, knowing that fascism looms large, flee and head to a remote island in the Galapagos. There, they encounter two other settler groups: a psychologist, Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife, Dore Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), and Baroness Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas), accompanied by her two lovers, who pursue building an exclusive hotel on the remote island. As the tribes become territorial, all hell breaks loose as their trust in one another erodes, and their animal instincts get the better of them, transforming paradise into a psychological battleground.
Sweeney’s role as Margaret is a challenging one. Surrounded by actors giving loud, charismatic performances, Sweeney’s quiet vulnerability showcases a softness to the beautiful island that she now calls home. Yet, her maternal instincts know the danger surrounding them. She is always one step ahead of everyone, even when she tries not to get involved to keep the peace. It is an exhausting routine as we witness Margaret both physically and emotionally force herself to survive, including a harrowing pregnancy sequence.
This is not to take anything away from the other actors, who are all well cast in their respective roles. De Armas’s baroness waltzes onto the island with bravado. Unable to hide her greed, she quickly lets her neighbors know who is in charge, much to their chagrin. It’s a delightfully over-the-top performance from Armas weaponizing her raw sexuality as she struggles to maintain a facade of power. Likewise, Jude Law’s Dr. Ritter provides the film with a cynicism unlike anything I have seen in any of Howard’s past works.
Eden is a psychological thriller about the human condition and survival, a mode of storytelling that Howard returns to frequently. In Apollo 13 and the underseen Thirteen Lives, survival is communal and unifying. In Ransom and Rush, protagonists are forced to weigh how far they are willing to go in pursuit of victory or justice. Even in his maligned Hillbilly Elegy, Howard explores resilience in the face of generational trauma. Eden successfully blends all three strands: the collective fight to endure, the moral compromises of survival, and the personal reckoning with who we become when pushed to our limits. While the film runs out of steam near its finale, it’s what Ron Howard achieves that marks Eden as a startling, almost unrecognizable evolution in his body of work. Gone is the restrained sentimentality or redemptive arc typical of Howard’s earlier films.
Eden is a nastier, meaner, dirtier piece of filmmaking than anything he’s ever attempted, as Howard leans into the rot of civilization -- spearheaded by Sweeney, pushing herself far beyond the glossy persona that dominates her public image.
Her performance as Margaret is a visceral act of stripping down: emotionally, physically, spiritually. There’s no glamor to it. It is the most raw performance of Sweeney’s career. It may not be the Summer of Sydney Sweeney, but this is the role that proves she’s more than just a cringe headline.
Author Bio:
Ben Friedman is a contributing writer and film critic at Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine