No matter how secure you feel in your relationship, the thought might occasionally cross your mind: What if I’m just the consolation prize? What if she secretly wishes she’d ended up with someone else? Director David Freyne’s third feature, Eternity, turns that nagging insecurity into a disappointing afterlife comedy about a decent fella who meets his maker, only to discover that his beloved wife may be waiting for someone else in Heaven.
Miles Teller plays Larry, who lived to a ripe old age on Earth, and now he’s arrived in some sort of celestial way station as he prepares for his final destination. According to Eternity, after we die, we have a week to decide which of a series of theme-park like paradises we want to go to. Maybe you’d prefer Surf World? Or Capitalist World? (One of the film’s better jokes is that Man-Free World is, understandably, booked solid for the foreseeable future.) Larry pines for his wife Joan, who is still alive, despite her failing health. Thankfully, he finds a sympathetic ear in Luke (Callum Turner), an afterlife bartender happy to pour Larry a drink and listen to his troubles. Most people go off to an eternity, but a select few, like Luke, stay in this purgatory. He has his own reasons, which Larry doesn’t ask about.
Not long after, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) passes away, leading to a joyful reunion between the long-married couple. But then she sees Luke, who just so happened to be her first husband, decades earlier. He died during the Korean War, and he refused to choose an eternity because he’s been waiting all these years for Joan’s arrival. Needless to say, this creates an awkward situation. Of course, Joan has spent much of her life with Larry, and loves him, but she only met Larry because Luke died. Joan loved Luke, tooâshe’d never been in a position in which she had to decide between them.
Eternity calls to mind several similar films about the Great Beyond. Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life are obvious reference points, and the movie’s drab, bureaucratic purgatory (known as the Junction) could have been conceived by Charlie Kaufman. Freyne (Dating Amber) can’t help but duplicate ideas from those other artists, but there is something refreshing about his suggestion that the Junction is little more than a cosmic convention center mixed with an overcrowded train station and a blah hotel chain. As for the different eternities, a few of which Eternity explores, they feel a bit like Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Holodeck, creating a perfect but hollow approximation of different Earthly climes or cliques. Heaven sure beats Hell, but Eternity hints at a vague ominousness about the numbing uniformity of these promised paradises. Sure, surfing is fun, but who wants to catch a wave for perpetuity in Surf World?Â
Freyne tries to be fair to all three sides of this romantic triangle. Larry is a good person, but Teller emphasizes the character’s mediocrity, not to mention his anxiety once he realizes who Luke is. On Earth, Larry had always suspected he was competing with Joan’s memory of Luke. And although Larry built a wonderful life with Joan, there was never anything special about himâhe wasn’t a war hero like Luke. (That said, Eternity does get some nice comic mileage out of Larry’s defensive insistence that the Korean War wasn’t that big of a dealâit’s not like it was World War II or something.) The film embeds us in Larry’s dilemma of having to court his wife all over again in the afterlife, forced to make the case that he’s the better catch even with suave, hunky Luke around.Â
But Eternity also feels for Luke, who through no fault of his own lost the love of his life at an early age. If he hadn’t been KIA, maybe he and Joan would have had that long, blissful marriage that Larry got to enjoy. As for Joan, she’s put into the impossible position of having to choose. Both men made her happy, so whichever decision she makes will leave one of them heartbroken. There are no bad guys in Eternity, which sets the stage for a potentially thoughtful exploration of fate, commitment, and the dubious notion of soulmates.Â
Alas, Freyne (who co-wrote the screenplay) settles for a sitcom-adjacent execution that leaves all three leads struggling to balance the story’s lighter and more melancholy tones. (The film’s lackluster comedic instincts are even more apparent in the wasted casting of John Early and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as busybody afterlife coordinators.) Teller has a knack for portraying honorable regular dudes, but Larry is too much of a construct to resonate. The actor’s main job is to be less dashing than the debonair Turner, but Eternity doesn’t make his character especially funny or interesting. Likewise, Turner’s Luke is charming without being very dimensional. That’s partly by designâeven in the afterlife, Luke comes across a bit like the memory of an idealized husband gone too soonâbut Freyne simplistically conceives Larry and Luke as, respectively, Mr. Reliable and Mr. Dreamboat.
But the real misstep is with Olsen, who has far less to work with here than she did in a very different film about mortality, 2024’s superb His Three Daughters. Joan spends time separately with both men at the Junction, pondering which she wants to spend eternity with. But Olsen doesn’t really get to convey Joan’s anguish about choosing because Eternity reduces her to a shrieking, freaking-out woman who behaves in contrived ways as the film builds suspense about her ultimate decision. The actress is too deft for such a daffy character, and while she has decent chemistry with both Teller and Callum, Freyne keeps things so jokey that we never get the sense of a profound connection between Joan and either man.Â
Credit Eternity for not taking the easy way out by revealing that Larry or Luke is secretly a jerk, thereby making Joan’s choice obvious. But by sidestepping the sharper, tougher questions about matters of the heart, the film still plays it too safe. Freyne may love all three characters, but what he doesn’t do is make his audience care deeply enough about which of them will get their happy endingâand which one won’t.
Director: David Freyne
Writers: Pat Cunnane, David Freyne Â
Starring: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Olga Merediz      Â
Release Date: November 26, 2025Â
