Ron Howard is on a survival thriller trip. After returning to his Apollo13 Roots with In the heart of the sea in 2015 and the newer Thirteen liveshis latest film is Edena story of a similar nature, which is also based on true events. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the fourth time and that only proves that the Howard haters are right in their claim that the Solo: A Star Wars Story Helmer is largely a journeyman with little style (or substance) of his own.

The star-studded drama is a letdown. It barely has a theme or strict meaning and is told with one of the most offensive color palettes digital cinema has to offer. The cast certainly does their best and makes commendable progress in fleshing out Noah Pink’s script (from a story by Howard and Pink), but too many visual and emotional details are lost at every turn, which Eden a kind of curiosity. One cannot help but wonder how it was presented in its final state.

what is Eden about?

Based on the accounts of several survivors who formed an improvised commune in the Galápagos Islands, the film is set on the (infamous) island of Floreana and adapts the broad strokes of the true events—the who’s who and who died and survived—but adds dramatic speculation about how exactly it all happened. Floreana was uninhabited until 1929, when the pompous Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his partner Dore Strauch (Vanessa Kirby) arrived from Berlin to set up camp on the tiny volcanic landmass. World War I, the ensuing economic crash, and resurgent fascism in Germany had prompted Ritter to search not only for a new place to live, but also an isolated fortress where he could write a manifesto to lead humanity to a harmonious new beginning. The film also suggests that Strauch’s multiple sclerosis may have been a reason she accompanied him, perhaps in the hope of recovery, but her needs are subordinated to the wishes of her narcissistic admirer.

The film is set several years after their stay on Floreana, when a family of three – having read in various newspapers the letters Ritter had sent to Europe – arrive there in hopes of a similar escape. Daniel Brühl plays Heinz Wittmer, Sydney Sweeney plays his pregnant, younger wife Margaret, and Jonathan Tittel plays Heinz’s teenage son (and Margaret’s stepson) Harry. The Wittmers are curious and well-meaning, but Ritter – an isolationist, despite his egalitarian principles – wants nothing to do with them, so they set up camp several miles away. Mild tensions begin to simmer between the two houses, but they only really escalate when a third, more chaotic group arrives and begins to sow discord between Ritter and the Wittmers.

Led by self-proclaimed heiress Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas) and her two assistants and lovers (Toby Wallace and Felix Kammerer), this hedonistic trio plans to build an island resort on Floreana where they will welcome wealthy guests. Their intrusion into the (admittedly troubled) paradise of the Knights and Wittmers lends itself to being an allegory for the way the wealthy classes have historically exploited resources at the expense of peace, but this is just one of the film’s many clues that lead virtually nowhere.

What is the meaning behind Edens survival story?

As rivalries erupt and factions emerge, Eloise proves herself a master manipulator and, thanks to de Armas’ bravura, becomes the film’s most entertaining (and perhaps only) character. She comes across as a typhoon whose sole purpose is to shake up the existing status quo. But that status quo is rarely interesting on its own. Things get most exciting when Howard’s camera zeroes in on Ritter’s attempts to write in isolation. Law’s temperament betrays a fidgety impatience, but his bearing is always regal, giving his character a magnetic appeal.

Unfortunately, few characters in the story are attracted to or repelled by him, let alone in the same breath. He simply exists as a temperamental figure that everyone accepts from afar while he makes grandiose claims to make the world a better place. Eloise is his counterpart in some ways—equally, if not more, deceitful—but rare are the moments when Eden takes advantage of this thematic doubling. The film largely deals with survival in the most technical, linear, and literal way possible, even though the setting is practically purgatory (the film’s biblical title also invites such an interpretation).

For Heinz and Margaret, survival means gathering food and water and getting through the pregnancy unscathed, but it never involves any deeper questions that test their faith or resolve. And unlike the great island stories of modern culture – Lord of the Flies And Lost first springs to mind – the larger problems of the characters (and society) do not come to Floreana, leaving only Eloise’s individual idiosyncrasies as a source of excitement. Had the film’s setting been radically different (a train, a cruise ship, perhaps a hotel), it’s unlikely that things would have played out much differently.

The fighting in Eden stem not from distrust or inner foolishness but from questions about how best to grow vegetables or how most effectively to fend off wild dogs, and yet the film is not particularly focused on the process of survival either. Instead, it is given the appearance – a delusion – of greater importance when in fact it is not. Part of this discrepancy is also due to the way Howard and cinematographer Mathias Herndl capture the island itself and the characters and their world in general, which makes the film particularly difficult to endure.

The cinematography in Eden works against his history.

Eden is an ugly film, but not in the way a survival saga should be. There is a visual ugliness that suits such a story, the kind that emphasizes the dark, the serious, the dangerous – like in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private RyanHere, it is not the ugliness of the oppressive environment that defines Floreana, but the ugliness of the texture itself and its noncommittal nature.

The film’s grim desaturation sometimes works, though it’s applied as a constant filter from start to finish, never evolving in parallel with the characters’ perspectives on the island – even if they initially view the place as a heavenly abode full of resources. When the characters eventually turn on each other, you hardly feel like their environments contributed to it in any way.

Even if one takes the film literally as a representation of a theoretically omniscient and dramatically ironic point of view, the aesthetic problems do not end there.

Perhaps a bigger problem than the amount of color in each frame is the contrast, or the complete lack thereof. Characters’ faces constantly fade into muddy gray, completely destroying anything reminiscent of the drama of shadows. Every shade of color begins to look and feel the same, from tree bark to human flesh (without even a hint of how humans might become one with their surroundings). It’s gruesome to look at, and swallows up any sense of detail.

For example, a scattered comment about Ritter’s teeth at the beginning hints at an element of his character. Heinz mentions that the doctor pulled his teeth for medical reasons, suggesting the extent of the procedure; perhaps it is one or two molars in the back of his mouth. However, when he is seen later in the film putting on metal dentures, it is revealed that all of Ritter’s teeth are missing. This is the first time attention is really drawn to his mouth, but the film doesn’t try to hide this fact or make it out to be a big reveal. It’s simply one of the many dramatic details (and character quirks) obscured by the film’s haphazard approach to color timing.

Similarly, scenes that should be flooded with intensity instead sink into monotony. Nothing about the human face and eyes, and therefore the human soul, can be fully concealed or properly emphasized if every part of the image looks equally dull and feels equally lifeless and bloodless.

In addition, the film goes far beyond its natural conclusion: a moment of distrust is revealed that seems to push several characters beyond their limits and leaves them wrestling with their moral backbone. But in its need to capture real events as they happened (albeit with its own interpretation of some of them), Eden lingers for far too long, like an uninvited, unpleasant houseguest who just doesn’t get the hint. Ironically, the film comes no closer to embodying the views of its characters.

Eden was reviewed at its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.