‘Eden’ Trailer: Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas, and Jude Law Fight to Survive in Ron Howard’s Island Nightmare

We finally have a trailer for Ron Howard’s “Eden.” The cast includes Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby — a lineup that usually screams prestige. And yet, this one is headed for an August 22 release, deep in the cinematic dead zone. Not exactly a sign of confidence.

Back in April, someone finally took “Eden” off the shelf. Vertical Entertainment was the buyer. Honestly, I was holding out hope that Netflix would come in and scoop it up. It’s exactly the kind of mid-budget star-driven guilty pleasure drama that would’ve quietly pulled big numbers on their platform.

“Eden” first showed up eight months ago in Toronto, where it received a lukewarm reception. The concept had promise — a high-stakes, psychological survival tale based on a true story, set on a remote island in the Galápagos. It’s the kind of grim, interpersonal chaos that might’ve worked better on a streamer, where viewers tend to be more forgiving of tonal inconsistency and narrative excess.

Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri called the film a sign that Ron Howard had "lost his mind," and, while extreme, it’s not a totally unfair take. “Eden” is unusually savage for Howard — a filmmaker more associated with uplift than descent into madness. But there’s something luridly watchable about it, a guilty-pleasure energy that almost plays like “Survivor” meets “Lord of the Flies” by way of WWII-era colonial escapism.

De Armas goes full villain here, playing a baroness so toxic she makes everyone else look reasonable by comparison. She chews the scenery with gusto.

This also comes just a couple of years after Amazon quietly dropped Howard’s well-reviewed “Thirteen Lives” onto Prime with little fanfare. And it raises a bigger question: what happened to Ron Howard? The guy who once had Oscar voters eating out of the palm of his hand hasn’t delivered a genuine hit — commercial or critical — since “Rush” in 2013.

Howard’s next project is the Afghanistan-set war movie “Alone at Dawn.” This is not the same Howard project that has Glen Powell attached to star in the lead role. That one was reported to be about elite firefighters “who must rekindle their fractured relationship when a series of deadly fires sweep across Texas.” It recently landed at Amazon/MGM.