Eternity Review: A Whimsical Afterlife Rom-Com With Heart [TIFF 2025]

You remember the scene at the end of “Titanic,” where Rose dies and goes to heaven, and she meets Jack at the ship’s staircase as though no time has gone by? And you think to yourself, “Wow, this is going to be pretty awkward when Rose’s actual husband turns up and finds out she’s been carrying a torch all these years for this guy she had like a three-day fling with in 1912?” That’s basically the central premise of “Eternity.” An unlikely rom-com with creative world-building that makes it feel part TV classic “The Good Place” and part “A Matter of Life and Death,” “Eternity” features endearing performances from the players in its dearly departed love triangle. It’s difficult not to fall in love with all of the characters in the film, and its breezy sense of humor makes “Eternity” a veritable crowdpleaser.

Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and Larry (Miles Teller) have been happily married (well, mostly) for over 60 years. But when Larry dies after choking on a pretzel, he learns the truth about the afterlife. Every person who dies gets to pick an eternity that best suits them — some options on offer are Beach World and a World Without Men, for which there is a lengthy waiting list — but whatever they choose, that’s the afterlife they’re stuck with forever. Although he agonizes over his decision, he comes to the conclusion that he will pick an afterlife and Joan will join him when she gets there. But a wrench is thrown in his plans when Joan dies a mere week after him, and they’re both faced with the revelation that her first husband Luke (Callum Turner) — a handsome soldier who died in the Korean War — has spent the past 67 years in the junction, waiting for Joan to arrive so that they can go to the afterlife together. Yeesh. Awkward. How is Larry supposed to compete with that?

It’s rare to have a love triangle like this where you can’t immediately decide which man you want Joan to end up with, and that speaks to the quality of all three performances. There’s no cheat code to make one of the options significantly less appealing, which is so often inserted into rom-coms to avoid the audiences having to feel too bad when a choice is ultimately made. Luke and Larry are both likeable in different ways: Larry a little crotchety but utterly devoted to Joan, Luke a sensitive dreamboat in a uniform who everyone in the film acknowledges as perfect except for him. And “Eternity” gives us a delightful little treat in that it allows Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner — three excellent actors in their own right, but none of whom are particularly well known for their comedic chops — the opportunity to be genuinely funny.

The main trio is lovingly supported by their two Afterlife Coordinators (ACs), Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph in her first major role post-Oscar) and Ryan (John Early), who after untold years on the job find themselves reinvigorated by the novelty and sheer romance of the relationship between Joan, Larry, and Luke. The stakes are high — a wrong move will blight their eternal existence, after all — and Joan is stuck with an impossible choice. Does she want to continue on with the warm, comfortable, familiar love that she experienced during a lifetime with Larry, or get a chance to have the life with Luke that was so cruelly stolen from both of them?

The most striking thing about “Eternity” is how quickly and effectively it accomplishes its world-building, thanks to a top-notch production design team that peppers every frame with details and little visual jokes. This is a whimsical vision of the afterlife, but one that has an undercurrent of darkness, considering how many times we see people attempting to escape their chosen eternity. Spending forever on the beach sounds like a good time, but human beings can’t really comprehend just how forever eternity actually is.

Oftentimes, high concept films like this have a great premise, but then crumble into dust the minute they try to stretch that idea into something feature-length. And while “Eternity” runs into some third act woes as it tries to wrap everything up in a satisfying manner, for the most part it feels well-paced and engaging to the end. The key to this, it would seem, is that there’s more going on within the film than just its central romantic dilemma — we’ve also got engaging side characters in the Afterlife Coordinators (it would be wonderful to have them fleshed out a little bit more, but then, that might make things become a little bit too unwieldy). In addition to that, there’s the philosophical concepts that the film introduces about the nature of the afterlife. In a lot of ways, it feels like a throwback to classic romantic comedies and Golden Age of Hollywood dramas that — in the midst of World War II and immediately following it — had a lot to say about death and the afterlife. With this in mind, “Eternity” is a rich, textured production that has far more depth than audiences might expect.

“Eternity” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in limited theaters on November 14 before releasing widely on November 26.