A review of Eternity, directed by David Freyne. A24, 2025.

Of all the versions of an afterlife that have been presented to film audiences, Eternity‘s is one of the most simple and, yet, most procedural. In David Freyne’s newly released film, every (dead) person’s first glimpse of the afterlife comes in the form of an overcrowded train station called the Junction, where they are assigned an Afterlife Coordinator (AC), who helps them choose from the seemingly endless list of eternities, in which they will spend the rest of their days. Seems simple enough. However, everyone only gets a week to decide which world to spend eternity in – unless they choose to perpetually work in the Junction – and once they have traveled to their eternity, they cannot leave. If anyone attempts to leave their chosen eternity, they will get thrown into “The Void,” an eternity of complete darkness.

These stakes are already high, as having only a week to decide where you’d like to spend eternity – essentially risking your own happiness until the end of time – is stressful enough. This film presents us with even higher stakes, though, as we follow the newly deceased Joan Cutler (Elizabeth Olsen), who must decide if she wants to spend eternity with her current husband of sixty-five years, Larry (Miles Teller), who died a week before, or her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who died at war and has been waiting for her in the Junction for sixty-seven years.

As expected, roughly the first three-fourths of this film follow Joan as she tries to choose the eternity that is best for her. Because of her special circumstance, Joan’s AC informs her that the higher-ups in the Junction (the film’s closest version to a God-type-figure) have allowed her to sample two eternities, one, with each of her husbands. From there, she must make her final decision.

She visits an eternity full of snowy mountains with Luke first. Luke is depicted as sort of dream-like. He haunts the narrative so much so that a photo of him and Joan together is literally the last thing Larry sees before he dies. He’s a figure of the past, having waited sixty-seven years for his beloved wife to come back to him, never aging, hardly changing. He is Joan’s – and the audience’s – what if. What if Luke hadn’t died and Joan had built a life with him, instead? What if any of us hadn’t gone through heartbreak or turmoil? What if we had stayed with a past lover? How would our lives look now?

What ifs only do so much good, though. Joan initially chooses to spend eternity with Luke because of their previous passionate romance and the missed opportunity to be together longer in life, but she slowly realizes how much she has changed. Sixty-seven years is a long time to miss and wait for someone, to be sure, but it’s a long time to grow out of them, too. Joan and Luke love each other, but the fact of the matter is that they were both idealizing one another. Luke has been stuck in limbo, waiting for a version of his wife that has not existed for nearly seven decades and Joan has been fantasizing over someone that, simply, doesn’t know her anymore.

Joan visits an eternity of warm, cramped beaches with Larry next. Larry does know her. He met her while she was still grieving Luke’s death. He married her and had children with her. He grew old with her. They changed together. Perhaps their romance was not fiery and passionate by the end, but it didn’t have to be. They were comfortable together. They knew each other, and that’s why Joan goes back to Larry and hides away in an eternity with him, instead.

I watched Eternity on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in a theater with four other people not including myself and my cinema-going companion. Though I walked in initially skeptical, as I’ve developed a bit of a distrust for love triangles in media, I walked out pleasantly surprised by the humor and sincerity of the film and I was left contemplating this idea of an afterlife and my own eternity. 

Despite its strict rules, the Junction as an afterlife was fascinating and it worked for me. Train stations are already a bit otherworldly, with the constant coming and going of crowds, the strange hum and stillness while waiting for your departure time, and the quiet calm of finally getting onto your train. They’re timeless places, where hours seem to pass through molasses, and I don’t find it hard to imagine that death is much the same way.

The idea of having to choose an eternity after you die and having a limited amount of time to do so is also fascinating to me. Though it’s a bit preposterous that these characters are only given a week to decide their fate – a timeline which I’m sure was only added to raise the stakes for poor Joan – I didn’t find it so ridiculous as to ruin the idea of choosing an eternity in the first place. We humans make life-altering decisions all the time, without giving it even an entire week’s thought. And though our mortal lives are nothing compared to the endlessness of eternity, it doesn’t always feel that way. This film, and Joan’s decision to spend the rest of time with Larry, shows us that life is long. Think of all the relationships you’ve had…some of them might not have even lasted a year, but many were still deeply affecting in some way. Sixty-five years is a significant amount of time to be with someone and to be changed by them. I dare say, it’s enough time to know whether or not you want to spend eternity with them.

This is all to say that I rather enjoyed this film and how it has made me consider my own life and my own eternity, if there is to be one. Though Joan’s eventual decision to spend eternity with Larry might seem like the obvious choice, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Humans are fickle, and we can become easily caught up in what ifs and lives not lived. Joan’s relationship with Luke is the perfect example of this. When presented with the opportunity to live a life that was torn away from us, to live in an eternity of pure happiness and passion, I think any one of us would consider it. We might even choose it, as Joan initially did. But then comes the clarity: life, eternity, or anything else beyond or between, is not always about happiness, and love is not all about infatuation. Life is about living it and being changed by it; in sixty-five years, you want to be different from who you are now. And love, perhaps, is simply about being known.