Movies & TV Eternity Eternity Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly If you’re looking for an afterlife romance, this might fit the bill… but don’t expect it to do anything surprising. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on December 2, 2025 Credit: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: A24 As a person who generally enjoys afterlife romantic shenanigans (don’t get me started on Chances Are, I beg you), Eternity seemed catered to my tastes precisely. Here’s a story about a woman named Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) who dies and finds out that the great beyond demands she choose an afterlife to reside in… forever. Things complicate themselves from there when both of her husbands—one she spent most of her life with, and one who died young in the Korean War—turn up to ask for her hand in eternity. Sounds fun, yes? Parts of Eternity are deeply enjoyable, but in a world where these sort of romantic comedies (being the sort where death and love intersect in silly ways) number far higher than you might expect, I was hoping for just a tiny bit more deconstruction. What we get is surprisingly rote and a little simplistic in terms of payoff. Perhaps all the name-checking of Billy Wilder on the press tour should have been a tipoff that surprise wasn’t on the docket so much as nostalgia for a different kind of film. Part of the trouble is in the film’s perspective choices—Joan’s husband Larry (Miles Teller, in the only role I’ve ever really enjoyed him in, which was a pleasant surprise) is the first one to die, which means that the film’s entire explanation of the afterlife occurs through his eyes, his vantage point. His Afterlife Coordinator Anna (another beautiful turn from Da’Vine Joy Randolph) explains that he must choose an eternity within a week, or stay at the “Hub” way station where he’ll have to get a job if he intends to wait for someone. Each eternity falls into a category, which is where things start to get a little itchy in terms of the worldbuilding; all the eternities were clearly built for the purpose of jokes, which means that they don’t make a ton of sense. There’s “Paris World,” “Capitalism World,” and “Studio 54 World,” and “Weimar Germany With No Nazis! World,” and also “Queer World,” which sounds like it should just be the former world, right? Then there are a bunch of afterlife eternities that are just geographical locations like “Beach World” and “Mountain World.” They each have a cap on residents, and once you’re there, you cannot change your mind. Your eternity is where you spend forever, which means this version of the afterlife is an absolute nightmare for anyone with ADHD who craves novelty, but I digress. You might think that wouldn’t matter because this is the afterlife, where earthly concerns don’t matter—and you’d be wrong! One of the funnier jokes in the movie deals with Larry’s presumptions about what a soul is, and Anna explains: What you are in life is basically what you are in death. (This is her gentle way of pointing out that Larry being a constantly aggravated grouch isn’t about to change any time soon.) If you had reservations about the cast all being young, hot versions of themselves once they die, this is explained in a way that makes it better… and also worse? The point is that you revert to the point in your life when you were “happiest,” which means there are a variety of ages running about the Hub. But that still points an odd finger at the central cast: Joan and Larry lived a long and lovely life together, complete with kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. While it’s perhaps understandable that Larry would want to revert to a point in time when he had fewer physical aches and pains, the idea that both he and Joan would choose to be a version of themselves possibly before all their kids were even born seems odd. It misses out on the possibility of two younger-appearing men trying to romance an older-appearing woman, or of having Larry and Joan played by older actors while Luke (that’s husband #1) swoops in, in all his baby-faced glory. The film doesn’t sink into Joan’s perspective until well after she arrives at the Hub, which feels like an error built into the film’s framework. The entire story hinges on her choice between two men—one she only had briefly and one who saw her through every little facet of life, good and bad. The movie does a decent job at showing the pros and cons of both, but without sitting in Joan’s vantage point for the majority of the story, we don’t get to know her well enough to feel out this journey with her. This is Joan’s story,  or it should be. Olsen gives a charming and emotional performance, but the film has forgotten she’s the central character… or worse, was afraid to let her take on that role. One of the best parts of the film is when Joan finally gets away from both men: Larry and Luke get to hang out and find that they actually like each other very well when they’re not busy vying for an afterlife partner. Joan goes on a bender with recently deceased, secretly gay neighbor Karen, played by the always-effervescent Olga Merediz (Editor’s Note: I have known the actor in question for my entire life, and called her “Auntie Yoga” as a toddler when I couldn’t pronounce her name, so if that impacts your trust of my ability to review her performance… I suppose that’s only fair. I am still right, though—she’s an absolute hoot in this role.) In this section, the film stops worrying about the big overarching plot questions and remembers that people are beautiful for all of their connections to each other, however those connections come about. But then we come up for air, and those same annoying questions linger. Before you ask, no, polyamory is never seriously considered in this. Which feels wild given the eternity factor, again, but fine.  Joan makes a choice that briefly seems like a break in the age-old narrative rules, but it’s not for interesting reasons: She’s simply too scared to break either man’s heart. It falls again to Larry to make the right decision for them both, one that sees the story through to its conclusion. But while Larry’s devotion to making Joan feel cared for and adored is a beautiful thing, it still makes for a puzzling experience overall. What we learn in this exercise is that our lives are made by the people who stand by us through every little curveball life has to offer. Which… I think a lot of us instinctively know, when you get right down to it. What Eternity seems to miss is that eternity itself doesn’t have anything to do with that—at least, not the way “eternity” was conceived of in this use-case.[end-mark] The post <i>Eternity</i> Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly appeared first on Reactor.