Rom-com Eternity delights in the drama of a postmortem love triangle
A24 brings us Eternity, the latest feature from director David Freyne and one of the strangest, delightful genre pivots of the year: a horror concept reimagined as a romantic comedy wrapped inside a sci-fi afterlife fable.
The premise alone taps directly into one of my nightmares—being forced to choose between my family and my spouse for all eternity? Yikes! But Freyne treats that panic-inducing scenario with a light touch and a warm heart, crafting a beautifully complicated postmortem love triangle perfect for sci-fi fans, comedy lovers, and hopeless romantics alike.
So what is Freyne’s take on romance after death? Surprisingly, something far more earnest and character-driven than expected. Elizabeth Olsen stars as Joan, who wakes up in the afterlife a week after her husband of 65 years, Larry (Miles Teller), choked to death on a pretzel after seeing an old photo of her… and her long-ago first husband, Luke (Callum Turner).
The rules of this new realm are clear enough: upon arrival, you revert to the version of yourself from the period when you were happiest. For Joan, that’s a young woman before life’s grief carved itself into her. For Luke, who died fighting in the Korean War shortly after their marriage, that happiness existed in a single brief window. And for Larry, it’s the younger man Joan first fell in love with once upon a time.
In this neon-lit waiting hub—half bureaucratic purgatory, half Ikea showroom—the newly dead have one week to choose their eternity. Remain in the hub and get a job or pick a custom afterlife from a sprawling, amusingly capitalistic catalog of brochures: mountain escapes, celebrity worlds, even “the pearly gates.” It’s an environment full of sharp production choices, including night-and-day curtains that slide across the windows to simulate the passage of time. The worldbuilding is brisk but compelling, offering just enough scaffolding without bogging down the real story.
Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen
Much of the film’s charm comes from its comedic heartbeat, powered almost entirely by the Afterlife Coordinators. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is delightfully brilliant as Anna, Larry’s AC. John Early nearly matches her as Ryan, Luke’s incessantly exasperated coordinator. Together, they form a two-person Greek chorus of bureaucratic insanity, injecting some needed levity without ever undercutting the emotional stakes. Their chemistry turns routine exposition into some of the film’s funniest moments.
Freyne structures this all around Joan’s trial run in each eternity. With Luke, she spends time in the mountains—a quiet, romantic retreat echoing the life they never got to have. With Larry, she visits a beach world which is ironically not a lush private vacation, but a crowded Coney Island-esque hell.
All the ingredients are here: clever worldbuilding, two genuinely compelling romances, standout comedic performances, and Olsen anchoring the film with a warm, deeply human portrayal. But what makes Eternity work is its refusal to treat love as a simple binary choice. Freyne takes a high-concept premise and molds it into something tender, strange, and surprisingly profound.
