Eternity (2025)

Pleasant Layover, Not a Destination - Eternity review by griggs

Spending time in Eternity feels a bit like being stuck in an airport hotel between lives. Souls check into “the Junction”, a mid-century Premier Inn purgatory, and have seven days to pick their next stop from what looks like a metaphysical trade fair. The options run from bleak to bleaker, with all the romance of shopping for a new washing machine. On paper, it’s a cracking script rescued from the Black List; in practice, it never quite digs into what people owe one another while they’re still breathing.

The love triangle is endearing in theory but gradually wears thin. Miles Teller does his easy-on-the-eye everyman routine; Callum Turner leans into being absurdly hotter than everyone else, while Elizabeth Olsen does the heavy lifting as the war-widow anchor. They’re all game, but you can feel them pushing against their archetypes.

The production design is the real star: mid-century tackiness that makes you think of A Matter of Life and Death, Defending Your Life and, more obviously, The Good Place, just without their bite, style, or panache. The Junction looks great as a slightly naff bureaucratic afterlife, but the story never quite matches the backdrop.

What really disappoints is how normal the ending is. For a film about eternity, it’s oddly timid: imagine if Olsen’s character had run off with her newly out friend, binned men altogether, or gone for a poly setup instead. Settling neatly on one bloke for ever hits the same beats as a hundred other heteronormative rom-coms. For all its cosmic promise, it ends up a pleasant layover, not a destination.