When I read the storyline behind Eden, I was eager to watch it so as to have a glimpse of perhaps what Chong Kim (the person on whom this movie is based) would have gone through when she was kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Sadly, the movie fails to deliver.
Now I can understand that bringing this real life story to the big screen cannot be an easy task, considering they have take into account the sensitive nature of the same; but the movie does a botched up job of trying to grip its audience of the grueling ordeal that Chong Kim had to go through and frankly speaking its quite disappointing.
Let's begin with the screenplay, the movie starts on a good note and just when you think its going somewhere; it totally skips ahead! Its as though the director just cut out a ton of scenes in between and jumped ahead, and that's where you totally lose interest in the movie. It starts to look like a puzzle that lacks all the pieces to turn it into something that makes sense and that's where the movie just starts to drag terribly. I don't know if the director was even making an attempt towards establishing a strong base for the protagonist as a character. To me, it was as though Jamie Chung was just doing her lines and some form of movements which I certainly would not call as acting. Again, Matt O'Leary's and Beau's performance too was just ordinary.
So there you have it folks, I would not recommend this for even a one time watch and that truly is a shame because I do feel Chong Kim's story needs to be heard by everyone in order for us to know what's really going on out there in the world. The world gets a little darker every day as we lose sight of our humanity and I think that there are plenty of good media out there for letting the people know the real story of not just Chong Kim but the millions more like her. I give this movie a 5 on 10 only because I read a few articles of her story and the tough times she went through, and that has sort of influenced my rating here; so in terms of film making as a whole, I'd say the crew involved have done a shoddy job.
