‘ETERNITY’ Wastes the Afterlife in Rom-Com Purgatory

Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) just died. Fortunately for her, death comes with options. She gets to choose between a series of curated afterlives, each designed so she can spend a hand-selected eternity with the person she loved most. Unfortunately, she was married twice: first to Luke (Callum Turner), a dedicated soldier who died in war, and later to Larry (Miles Teller), with whom she shared 65 years and raised a family. So now Joan must decide between the smoldering heat of her first love and the cozy domesticity of her second. With A24 distributing and a respectable cast assembled, one might assume the existential rom-com Eternity would sidestep the genre’s tired clichés and deliver something meaningful. Instead, it sinks comfortably into the wreckage of the rom-com’s worst instincts, like a codependent relationship that’s too lazy to risk anything new. Though just mildly amusing and just mildly clever, Eternity is unmistakably formulaic, centering its drama on that tried and true love triangle truism: women be indecisive.

What could’ve been a sharp, poignant exploration of how our needs in love shift over a lifetime—whether it’s the fire of early romance or the soft, steady glow of companionship—is filled down into a cheap choice of picking the guy behind door number one or picking the guy behind door number two, content to use its would-be interesting afterlife conceit as aesthetic window dressing. The love triangle is disappointingly basic: Does Joan choose the stone-jawed war hero who makes her swoon or the somewhat grumpy ol’ Gus who makes her laugh and shares a lifetime of memories with her?

One of the reasons it feels stale is that Joan, Luke, and Larry arrive as tired archetypes. Not just because they were probably born in the 1940s, but because the writing leans hard into flat, overfamiliar tropes. There are some humorous asides – the various afterlife options include a Nazi-free 1930s Germany and a perpetual Studio 54 with complimentary cocaine samples—but these are mostly throwaway sight gags rather than meaningful worldbuilding. Some of the side character performances are shaky, which further destabilizes the “reality” of this beautractical afterlife and the supposedly weighty choices it presents. And then there are the film’s foundational assumptions: that one must choose only one eternity (and one of the options is “Museum World”…for some reason), that this is somehow the first time a woman has had to pick between two dead husbands, and that hangovers still exist in the afterlife. It’s a bizarrely nihilistic take for a love story, and none of it helps make the world feel lived-in or real.

The real tragedy of Eternity is how it teases depth, then runs from it. The film from director David Freyne (Dating Amber) and written by Freyne and Patrick Cunnane (Designated Survivor) flirts with being a meditation on the anxiety of choice and the impossibility of knowing what (or who) is truly “right” for us. But again and again, it picks the safest, blandest path. Much like Joan, it’s indecisive about what it wants to be about. For a film about hard decisions, Eternity never risks making any.

The performances are largely serviceable, but none of these turns are making it into anyone’s In Memoriam reel when they pass. Olsen plays Joan as the platonic ideal of a trad-wife, but she’s June Cleaver to the point of being nearly black and white. She’s so smoothed out and agreeable that she barely registers as a real person, though Olsen plays the torment of indecision with conviction. Teller gets the most comedic material, playing Larry as an old soul in a whipper snapper’s body whose hips suddenly work – though remains dressed in grandfatherly cardigans – but his jokes rarely rise above a half-hearted “heh” at the very best of times. Turner brings charm and old-school bravado to Luke, but the character is as much a pastiche of strong, silent type characters that he may as well have drifted out of a 1930s romance film. None of them are bad by any means, but they’re too familiar and underwritten to make us care. The erupting conflict for Joan’s affection is understandable but plays out predictably, just as the eventual détente between Luke and Larry feels hurriedly obligatory rather than earned. Which is offensive considering this movie stretches on for an eternal 112 minutes.

Some of the best modern romantic comedies use genre as a springboard into something more profound. Think About Time, which turns a sci-fi conceit into a rich reflection on love, memory, and the fleeting beauty of everyday life. Eternity does the opposite. It borrows sci-fi trappings to sell a deeply conventional story. It’s a shame, because the premise has real potential. Instead, what we get is meek, mild, tender; the angelic ideal of boring afterlife nothingness. Everything about Eternity is light, airy, and risk-averse. Given the A24 branding, you might expect a deeper dive into existential themes but are treated instead to pulled punches and pillow fights. An overlong movie about the permanence of love that vanishes from memory the second the credits roll.

CONCLUSION: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner aren’t the problem but ‘Eternity’ is standard-issue love triangle fare, just dressed up to look like something more.