'Eternity' review: A heartfelt afterlife romance with charm to spare

Courtesy of A24

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Movies about the afterlife or the great beyond are a dime a dozen. We’ve seen plenty of filmmakers speculate on what happens to our minds, bodies, and souls once our ticket gets punched. Enter “Eternity,” another entry in that crowded subgenre, but a surprisingly worthy one that packages an impossible scenario inside a wholesome, romantically charged framework. It’s also one of the more imaginative spins on this territory in recent years, boosted by a trio of charismatic leads in Miles Teller, Elisabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner.

Co-writer and director David Freyne leans into a slightly cutesy sensibility, and at times the film feels like a live-action Pixar experiment that wandered into an indie rom-com. Still, the premise is undeniably clever. In this world, when you die, you wake up on a celestial train gliding toward a junction, where you’re greeted by an AC, or Afterlife Coordinator, whose job is to help you choose where you want to spend your eternity. You appear as the version of yourself from when you were happiest, which explains why Larry and Joan, introduced as elderly spouses (Barry Primus and Betty Buckley), are suddenly played by younger, movie stars. 

Your afterlife options are vast, whimsical, and occasionally so silly they border on parody. Smokers’ World exists because, as the movie notes, cancer can’t kill you twice. There’s Mountain Town, an eternity where men no longer exist, and a dreamy Paris escape. The only limits are your imagination and the discounted choices you’d rightfully never pick, like Clown World. The catch is that your decision is final. No trial period. No exchanges. No refunds.

Miles Teller brings a smarmy, rumpled charm to Larry, whose earthly demise involves choking on a pretzel. He’s understandably bewildered, yet determined to wait for Joan, who was battling terminal cancer and should be arriving any day. He failed her on Earth by not being there when she passed, at least in his mind, but he’s ready to spend forever making that right. Except when Joan finally does show up (a luminous Elisabeth Olsen), she’s immediately swept up by Luke (Turner), her first husband, who died in the Korean War, and has spent the last 67 years waiting in limbo for her.

It’s a tough rival for Larry, and the film smartly pivots into a romantic dilemma that puts Joan at the center. With some nudging from the bickering ACs played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, Joan is encouraged to explore her options in what essentially becomes “The Bachelor…but you’re dead!” The hook works, but the more you examine the world’s mechanics, the more the cracks show.

There’s a ticket taker chained to the booth at the Archives, the place where souls can revisit old memories, and the movie never addresses why he’s seemingly doomed to customer-service purgatory for the rest of his existence. And the lack of a trial period for afterlife choices is bizarre given the stakes. Pick wrong and you’re stuck forever. Try to change your mind and goons literally drag you into something called a void. It’s silly, sure, but clearly the film needed more tangible stakes than “follow your heart.”

Still, underneath that logistical wobbliness is something undeniably tender. “Eternity” digs into what we define as love, purpose, and the weight of shared history. Joan must choose between the electric passion of her first love, a relationship cut short, or the man with whom she built an actual life. A family. A legacy. The quiet moments that define who we are.

All three actors are effortlessly charming. Teller shines as the underdog, grounding the film with a performance that isn’t showy but deeply felt. Olsen radiates curiosity and warmth as she rediscovers the joys of moving through the world in a younger body. Turner channels an irresistible James Dean cool, the kind of heartbreaking magnetism that makes him a real threat to Larry.

The film takes a few unexpected detours and occasionally hand-waves its own logic, but it finds its emotional center and sticks the landing in a way that feels both earned and cathartic. Randolph and Early deserve a mention too; they turn their supporting roles into a sharp, funny double act that brings real texture to the afterlife bureaucracy. “Eternity” doesn’t reinvent this genre (Albert Brooks absolutely wants a word), but its sweetness, sincerity, and romantic pull are hard to deny.

It may not answer the big questions about what comes next, but it does remind us that love, in all its messy contradictions, is worth carrying into whatever eternity waits for us.

Grade: B 

ETERNITY is now playing in theaters.