Absolutely brilliant

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I have a tendency to read up on the facts behind a movie as I watch it... Especially movies based on "true stories". More times than not movies based on true stories tend to be two disjointed details a writer has connected through some fictional thread. I've learned from my research that many times a writer will take some minor event and write an over the top story about it to make it entertaining and interesting. Usually these movies go way over the top and when I read up on it, I find myself disappointed by what the reality of the fact are. This apparently was not the case with the movie Eden. As I researched the movie, I kept reading more and more horrific events about the life of Chong Kim. He "true" story had her sexually abused by baby sitters, her fathers friends, teachers and principles... and then physically abused by her mother. According to what I read about her on the internet, she was a Criminology major when she was kidnapped by a "boyfriend", and sold into sexual slavery. As her story unraveled she thought she was subjected of domestic abuse and not sexually exploited by pimps as she was sexually abused in warehouses with 40 other women. Her story also involved her NOT calling 911 during an escape attempt, and instead wasn't able to find any help because she didn't have any identification, before her pimps/kidnappers found her. In another escape attempt she was shunned by a mall full of parents as she screamed and yelled for help. Apparently, her final escape involved her crawling through an air duct in a Vegas hotel, knocked a man unconscious with her shoe heel and made her escape by stealing his car. As I read through her story as I watched the movie, I realized they had to scale back on these "details" about her life to make a believable movie. Which unfortunately puts this woman's story in a dubious position with me. I put in several hours of effort to find any evidence that her story was true. All I could find were interviews with her.... No news stories, no connections to arrests, nothing. I would think in an attempt to identify how warehouses filled with women could occur in America she would at least testify in front of a congressional subcommittee. Unfortunately I never found any vett'ing by any news agency to back up her story.While I feel the subject of sexually trafficking to be an extremely important one.... The more I learned about this women the more I find it difficult to take this movie seriously. As far as the movie itself went... I found it to have value in the sense it has people talking about the subject. I felt the acting was well done and you could feel the fear of Jamie Chung character Eden. I also found the twisted, and emotionally crippled character of Vaughan to be interesting as he goes from looking at Eden as a piece of meat to thinking they were in a pseudo relationship. There were the typical plot holes that one has to look the other way for like the mystery spray that instantaneously kills Vaughn, the existence of underground hospitals that imprison pregnant women for months at a time, the corrupt US Marshal that runs the day to day operations. Then the story tip toed around the underlying story of the movie... for a sex slave operation there was a noticeable lack of sex or violence. Which sort of left me scratching my head a bit.My gut instinct tells me there is some seriously shady holes in this woman's "true story"... I just felt they should have scaled it back a bit more and made it grittier to really highlight the plight of the women in the sex trade industry. The way this movie is right now, I'm expecting to have to debating the truthfulness of Chong Kim's life rather than the topic of sexual trafficking.

To me, films like this are the true definition of horror, because they really happened. Anyone can look up the graphic details on Wikipedia and see that not only did it happen here, but it happened fairly recently. Hyun-Jae was just a typical California teenager, who went out to party one night. She met a man, left with him, and quickly learned he wasn't what he appeared to be. Hyun-Jae is sold into prostitution and has no other choice, but to be a sex slave for the next three years. The film was very well done, in that it didn't go over the top. Abduction of Eden showed us, what we needed to see, in order to understand and be shocked by what happened, but it didn't go so far as to desensitize us to the story. Jamie Chung, A.K.A. Stu's wife from the Hangover, stars as Hyun Jae, and her performance was really key to how the audience would react to what was happening. Equally as good, was the jailer, Matthew O'Leary. It took me a while to recognize his as the kid from Domestic Disturbance and Spy Kids 2, and it was shocking to see how quickly he grew up. He was this horrible guy, doing terrible things, but there was a part of you that saw him as trapped as the girls were and you couldn't help but feel sorry for him. The cast makes the film, it's as simple as that. Abduction of Eden was a story that was fast moving and somewhat graphic, but ultimately predictable. Films like this one could go either way, it all comes down to just what they show and who they cast, and the producers of this film did an outstanding job of both.

I always prefix my reviews by making clear what my expectations were. I'm very aware that the final score you give a movie is relative to the expectations a person had going in. With that said, I didn't expect to see the movie, and I didn't expect much from it. And that may play a hand in why it blew me away initially.Eden isn't flawless by any means. But it is extremely well-acted, and well shot. Add in that it's a powerful story, and it's a movie that when I got done watching I was still thinking about. Usually that's either a good thing, or a really bad thing.On to the bad. I don't know if I should blame the director, the movie industry politics, or US society as a whole. But it's ridiculous, almost bordering on comical that a movie completely about an individual experience as a forced prostitute would avoid anything overtly sexual. Not to advocate for that type of conduct, but I really do feel that the film would've been so much more powerful if they would've actually showed you what she went through as opposed to only hinting at it here and there.On to my final point. And I tried not to let this effect my overall rating of the movie. But I really REALLY didn't like that they said "based on a true story". Maybe they could've gotten away with saying "inspired", but not based. For one, the story in the movie is only loosely based on the story Chong Kim has been telling. And two, I've been looking into Chong Kim's actual story, and I'm pretty sure that she's a crazy lady. She has told multiple versions of the events. In one version the guy who posed as her "boyfriend" sold her to the traffickers, in the other she escaped him and was sold to the traffickers when she accepted a job as an escort. Again, it doesn't really affect my rating of the movie. But I really did want to note that the whole saying it's based on a true story thing without checking to make sure that it really is needs to end.

It's just utterly terrible how the underage girls gets kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Like how it's shown in this movie and how it also happens in real life. The kidnappers and the people running the business and is part of it is just downright vile and isn't something you can even call human beings. Even the clients are twisted and have messed up mentality going. But the thing is this movie just isn't heart-wrenching or hits the core as I thought it would. Maybe it's because of the direction and the way the story is told, it just didn't have that emotional impact that hits you in the heart or gut. Like movies such a "Bad Guy" 2001 or "Compliance" 2012 did. Although it's based on the true story about a person name Chong Kim, the direction it takes, loses it's impact and just isn't haunting or anything like that. Like I said it must have been a horrifying experience to go through and get their innocence taken away by these ruthless scums that are portrayed in the movie. But as an audience besides feeling bad for the victims it just didn't have the momentum it needed and just didn't stick. This movie as a whole seemed like it's missing a lot of bits and pieces that needed to be there for it to deliver but it just doesn't. It's a shame a story like Chong Kim is shown through a movie that doesn't capture the emotions because it just seemed to lack many parts. It does give somewhat of a hope in life, and how it can still go on. But when it comes down to it, it's still one of those movies that starts off attention grabbing but falter as it progresses.6/10