The 2024 survival thriller Eden, starring Sydney Sweeney, has landed on Amazon Prime Video to… confused reaction.
The Ron Howard-directed movie, also featuring Ana De Armas, Vanessa Kirby and Jude Law, follows ‘a group of disillusioned European settlers on a remote, uninhabited island in the Galápagos.’
Based on a true story, it brings to life conflicting accounts about how eight people arrived and less than half survived as this experimental utopia quickly spirals into death and destruction.
After recently landing on Prime Video in the UK, it has shot up the charts, already landing at number two.
The Lord of the Flies-esque film came out last year to mixed reviews, although it secured a solid Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 73% with reviewers calling it ‘visually stunning’, ‘twisty’ and ‘entertaining’.
Now it’s in the hands of a wider audience, however, some viewers have been left gobsmacked at the ‘German’ accents put on by the Hollywood A-list cast.
One scene from the movie has gone viral online, during which our main players are sitting at the dinner table arguing about literature, all with valiant attempts at putting on the thick accent with to little avail.
Especially paired with the awkward direction of the entire sequence, filled with stilted pauses.
‘Sweeney’s accent in the beginning is so atrocious, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was giving high school play rather than a Hollywood film,’ summercloudsadness shared on Reddit.
‘They could have cast literal unknown German actors, or anyone who had a grasp of German accents/language/culture, and they would have done a better job,’ Toastedrage2 said.
‘I’m not even German and can categorically say my English ear immediately picked up on these being terrible accents,’ magentas33 wrote.
‘This is so horrendously bad it’s funny. The accents, the camera directions, the weird looks between characters speaking,’ LovelyBlood added.
‘This is the impression you hear in the wild when people mimic what they think a German accent is,’ XboxJocket echoed.
‘At the level of fame they’re at, I don’t see how there is any excuse for accents this bad. Accents are really hard, but you can be taught by experts,’ Makstracy posed.
‘If they weren’t going to hire German actors for the role, they should have just had them all speak in their natural accents and just let the audience roll with it,’ supercrappyfuntime suggested.
Although some have come to the defence of Fantastic Four star Vanessa, saying she ‘carried the scene’ and believed the movie had its merits for the wild storyline, nonetheless.
‘Ron Howard delivers an absorbing and disturbing drama. It’s like a locked room mystery set on an island, where the players find themselves in a pot, melding human nature, survival and the struggle to achieve something more,’ RT user Diane posted.
‘I like that it’s a true story & it was really good. I knew some people were going die but didn’t know who. Very suspenseful & love that the movie get into each individual character,’ Daisy L agreed.
Discussing coming across the bizarre true story of the Galapagos affair 15 years ago, Howard told Deadline: ‘It is a thriller, and part of that suspense is wondering who’s going to survive and why. This true story was so full of that.
‘It is based on two wildly different accounts of the same unsolved mystery. As you delve into it, it certainly falls into that category of stranger than fiction.’
Eden is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.
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