Who would be the fittest to survive on a deserted island? The smartest? The most generous? The most ruthless? In Eden, the answer isn’t exactly hypothetical, since it’s based on a true story from the early 20th century, when a group of Europeans decided to abandon everything and settle in Floreana, a remote island in the Galápagos. What began as a utopian experiment—far from the disillusionment and violence of the modern world—quickly devolved into a spiral of distrust, violence, and death. Based on conflicting testimonies from two participants, Ron Howard’s new film serves up a more-than-satisfying four-course meal of gripping drama, morbid true crime, voluptuous entertainment, and the kind of movie-star performances we miss seeing on the big screen.

In 1929, Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife, Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), leave Germany in search of a new life, free of bourgeois values. With an explicitly philosophical purpose, they choose Floreana to prove that another way of life is possible: one in harmony with nature, stripped of luxuries, and untainted by the moral corruption of a Europe marching toward war. By the time the film begins, the couple has already settled, and Friedrich’s writings—passionate defenses of the utopia they’ve built—are gaining notoriety abroad. Absorbed in finishing his manuscript, a “manual for life” that blends Western and Eastern ideas and is destined, he believes, to “change the world,” Friedrich leaves Dora to manage the practical realities: tending meager crops, caring for a pitiful chicken farm, and coping with her multiple sclerosis. They sustain themselves without any intention of improving their condition.

The solitary, conflict-free existence Friedrich promotes through his writings is ironically disrupted by believers. The Wittmer family—Heinz (Daniel Brühl), his wife, Margret (Sydney Sweeney), and their son Harry (Jonathan Tittel)—first pay the Ritters a visit before finding their own place on the island. The Ritters greet them with thinly veiled hostility, making it clear they don’t welcome neighbors. Dora warns, “Anything on the island can kill you,” perhaps not only referring to wild animals. Although inspired by Ritter’s ideals, the Wittmers simply want a new place to build a family. For Heinz, a World War I veteran, Floreana represents safety. For both parents, it’s also a desperate attempt to remedy their son’s mental health struggles. To Ritter’s irritation, the newcomers thrive where he struggles, creating a sustainable environment in short order. Despite the unforgiving climate, they grow crops, dig a potable well, capture a cow for milk, and even tame a wild dog.

At first, the only real conflict is Friedrich’s refusal to help Margret with her upcoming childbirth, a pregnancy he regards as reckless. But any fragile tolerance collapses with the arrival of a third settlement, led by Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas). With a flamboyant presence and two young lovers in tow, the Baroness immediately destabilizes the island, exploiting her neighbors’ weaknesses and openly declaring her intent to build a luxury hotel. Her tent, pitched near the Wittmers’ well, is only the beginning of far worse intrusions.

Howard builds a biblical-scale drama in which three competing visions—the intellectual, the emotional, and the capitalist—collide in an inevitable crisis. It’s a true story that doubles as a metaphor for humanity’s inability to escape the very problems it seeks to leave behind. Howard’s moral center is clearly Margret and her family, who embody the most traditional unit of stability, though the film leaves room for interpretation.

Eden has it all: operatic entrances (De Armas steals the movie the moment she appears), big bugs, threesomes, pustules, food poisoning, withering side-eyes (Kirby excels at them), male frontal nudity to greet guests (courtesy of Law), the awe-inspiring yet unforgiving beauty of the island, and even a macabre childbirth scene surrounded by wild dogs (a tender yet fierce Sweeney proving herself again in a physically and emotionally demanding role). De Armas ultimately triumphs with the most commanding performance, crafting a cruel but magnetic figure of self-delusion and effervescent charisma.

With all the right ingredients, Howard has cooked up a glorified soap opera—meant as a compliment—that, even in its excess, never slips into camp, thanks to the director’s control and the actors’ commitment. While Rush (2013) hinted at his darker side, Eden stands out in Howard’s prolific career as his nastiest, bleakest, and least optimistic vision of human nature—a surprising departure from a filmmaker often drawn to the bright side. The Floreana case is exactly the kind of true story that today might inspire a miniseries. Instead, we are fortunate to have it rendered as a grand, ambitious, and seductive film, under the confident gaze of a director playing against his own reputation for humanist sensitivity.