David Freyne’s 2025 romantic dramedy “Eternity” is the kind of movie that barely gets made anymore: smart, funny, and surprisingly thought-provoking. The film was released without a ton of fanfare, but now it’s topping streaming as the second most-watched movie on Apple TV+ according to Flix Patrol, surpassing such flicks as Wolfs (which was the most-watched flick ever in 2024 on the streamer), “The Gorge”, and Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” among others.
Written by Freyne and Pat Cunnane, “Eternity” takes an intriguing, if bittersweet, high-concept idea and runs with it. What if, when you die, you find yourself (or more like your spirit) in a place with other dead folks where you can choose what kind of eternity you want (well, for eternity), and who you want to spend it with. To help make the right choice, you’re assigned an afterlife coordinator who can guide you through the whole process, explaining the rules to make the irreversible decision.
We learn all this through the eyes of Larry (Miles Teller), whose life ends at an old age when he accidentally chokes on a pretzel, and then wakes up on a train in the body of his younger self (representing the time in his life when he was the happiest) en route to the place called Junction, which looks like an enormous convention center for dead souls. Larry decides to wait for his wife, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), but he isn’t the only one. Luke (Callum Turner), her first husband who died in the Korean War, has also been waiting for decades to reunite with his big love. So when Joan dies of cancer and arrives, she’s faced with an impossible decision: She has to choose between two men who defined her life, and decide which one of them she’d want to spend eternity with.
Eternity is a light-hearted comedy that seamlessly tackles some of the heaviest questions about life
On the surface, David Freyne’s feature is a modern screwball comedy full of charm and witty jokes — most of which are delivered with flair by Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s and John Early’s hilarious afterlife coordinators, Anna and Ryan. But behind every silly and nostalgic gag lies a profound truth about life. “Eternity’s” greatest strength is presenting those big and loaded life-defining moments in an effortless and amusing way, but never undercutting how meaningful they are when one is forced to reckon and look back on the life they lived.
The reason it all lands so convincingly is partly due to the excellent cast and the sparking chemistry they share (especially the trio of Teller, Olsen, and Turner), the emotionally mature script, and the exuberant yet wistful production design that creates an immersive, fantastical milieu of what the afterlife might look like. “Eternity” may be nothing but a fantasy, but the questions and the dilemmas it poses are more than relatable and applicable to our own lives — whether we watch it young or old.
Due to those qualities, it’s hardly a surprise that the A24 movie was a critical darling (currently standing at a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and a commercial success last year, making $34 million worldwide against its $12 million budget at the box office. That said, Freyne’s film still feels somewhat underrated and underseen — it’s a shame that it couldn’t even get a single Oscar nomination — given that it’s the sort of inventive, creatively rich, and emotionally intelligent dramedy that we don’t get a lot of these days.
