Some might say 2025 was the year of Sydney Sweeney, and not always because of her primary career. But away from all of the noise, the actress had a busy year, certainly, but with somewhat mixed results, both critically and at the box office. As she did in 2024 (following Madame Web with Immaculate), Sweeney ended well with the double-header of Christy and The Housemaid, which both posted 90%+ audience scores. The other 3 movies she released this year were… less well received, and one of them – perhaps the most notable flop of them, is now on Netflix.
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As well as the uneven Apple TV thriller Echo Valley (her only Rotten-rated movie of the year), she also released Americana (after a 2-year delay), and teamed up with a very talented cast and crew for survival thriller Eden. Directed by cinema icon Ron Howard, and co-starring names as big as Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, and Daniel Brühl, the film took just $2.5 million against a gross budget of $55 million (reduced to $35m thanks to tax acrobatics). And if you want to watch how a movie can take less than $50m of what its production cost, Netflix has finally added Eden to the streaming line-up today.
Why Eden Is Actually Worth Watching
Eden is a curious case of exceptional talent coming together to make an almost illogically-sized flop. Okay, it didn’t cost hundreds of millions, but to take only $2.5m is a quite remarkable feat, helped, in no small part, by a largely invisible marketing campaign. The star power involved was never going to pull its weight enough in 2025, even with lots of very charismatic, very engaging talent involved, and the trailer (below) simply didn’t lay out enough of a sales pitch:
There’s certainly tension in there, but there’s no real sense of the story, which deserved more of a platform. Eden is the true story of European settlers who settle on an island in the Galápagos, essentially seeking a paradise to build their lives upon. Sweeney plays Margret Wittmer, the key figure upon whose memoirs the movie is based, and is – like the rest of the cast – very good in her role. That nobody got to see any of it defies belief.
Eden is not an exceptional film, but it is made with the kind of precision that you’d expect from Howard, with the grip you’d expect of this cast handed the opportunity to build a tense thriller. It sort of exists between The Swiss Family Robinson and The Lord of the Flies, with a touch of Danny Boyle’s The Beach thrown in for the nastier parts. It absolutely did not deserve to be so roundly shunned nor as easily forgotten. And now it’s on Netflix you can exactly why.
Have you seen Eden? What did you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Image Courtesy of HBO -
Image Courtesy of HBO Max
