"Eden": A Femme Fatale in the Homosocial Garden

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Eden (2019) is a short horror film, indeed, lasting approximately six-and-a-half minutes. Three somewhat immature “homies” encounter a femme fatale who looks somewhat like a modern-day vampire. She is extraordinarily strong and quick, and she can open her mouth tremendously wide. Like any other self-respecting femme fatale, she lures male victims with her beauty.

The plot is simple and straightforward:

D. J., Elliott, and Jason, who appear to be slightly drunk, clown with each other as they make their way through dark city streets to Elliot's car. On the way, D. J. (Benjamin Abiola) drops his keys.

In the back seat, D. J. realizes that he doesn't have his keys.

Retracing his steps, he finds them on the sidewalk and pockets them.

In the car, Jason (Bobby Coston) shows Elliott (Charles Brakes III) a photograph on his smartphone: a young woman whose buttocks they admire. Jason tells Elliott that the woman has a sister.

Seeing a young woman (Tayla Drake) at a distance, he offers her a ride. He runs to her, and she slits his throat with a sweep of her nails.

Clutching his throat, he staggers away from her and falls to his knees.

 

In the car, Elliott tells Jason that he's going to “check on D. J.”

On the sidewalk, Elliott sees a trail of blood. He turns and runs back to his car, calling to Jason.

Returning his call, Jason gets out of the car, leaving the door open. He looks frightened as he repeatedly calls Elliott's name.

The car door slams shut behind him. He whirls and takes a couple steps backward.

Turning, he sees the young woman who killed J. D. Her top is covered in J. D.'s blood.

She looks up, smiling. Her mouth, dripping blood, opens impossibly wide.

Elliott's fate remains unknown.

Of course, besides Elliott's fate, the film leaves many other questions unanswered. Who is the predatory woman? What, exactly, is she? Why does she stalk men? Why does she kill them? Why does she feed upon human blood?

There is plenty of room for both plot and character development, but this exercise in filmmaking, in itself, doesn't offer much depth.

The only attempt to involve the action in a theme that transcends the story's action per se is a quotation, apparently invented, which is attributed to an apparently fictitious pontiff, Pope Seymore IV: “Lust of the beauteous garden bait souls of the damned, and only then will they feel the wrath of Eden.”

To begin with, the meaning of the quotation is unclear. “Lust of” suggests that it is the “garden” that lusts and that, perhaps (the rest of the quotation is unintelligible), the garden, to satisfy its lust, “baits souls of the damned.” This reading makes the “garden” the villain and the young men the victims.

How does the garden identify the “souls of the damned?” Or do the “souls” become “damned” simply by virtue of their being baited? In other words, does the garden's baiting of the souls damn them? Alternatively, does the garden's “bait” work solely on souls that are already damned?

In any case, the quotation makes clear that the damned souls experience Eden's “wrath” only after they have been baited by the garden.

 

Of course, the filmmakers may have intended the quotation to begin with the prepositional phrase “lust for,” which situates the lust not in the garden itself, but in those who lust for the garden.

However, even such an attempt as this to infuse the production with depth is awkward. It characterizes beautiful young women as objects; they are flowers in a “beauteous garden,” planted, as it were, to “bait souls of the damned.”

Although, in this reading of the quotation, it is the damned souls' own lust that damns them, the flowers themselves are not entirely innocent; they are the “bait” that excites the men's lust and tempts them to sin, just as the Biblical Eve, in the garden of Eden, tempts Adam to sin. The “flowers,” one of which, metaphorically speaking, Eden appears to be, use their beauty to ensnare men, attracting their lust. In this sense, the “flowers” are no more passive than a Venus fly trap; the women are predators. Therefore, their “wrath” is hard to understand, let alone to justify.

In the Eden short, there is no serpent in the “beauteous garden” to entice the woman who entices J. D. and Jason, unless she is herself both serpent and seductress, a lamia like Lilith, Adam's first wife, according to Jewish folklore.

Perhaps, the filmmakers suggest, there is no need for a serpent as such. Instead, the sexist attitude of the young men makes them vulnerable to the charms of beautiful young women. To some degree, the young men's sexism is informed by the values and the norms of the larger society that nurtured them. The young men's notions of what is proper conduct with regard to women and sex is influenced by the media and by the conventions, customs, traditions, and practices of the patriarchal society in which they live.

Young men are taught, directly and indirectly, that it is acceptable to view women as objects, as “flowers” ripe for the plucking, as commodities that can be bought for the mere offer of a ride, the very offer that J. D. makes to Eden. These attitudes and values and the mores that inculcate them may be the snake in the garden which, in defining roles for young men, also define the complementary roles of young women.

However, Eden is not a typical young woman. She is the predator, rather than the young men's prey. She has turned the tables on her would-be conquerors, making them her victims. The beauty that would normally endanger her becomes a lure by which she snares her male victims. She, a potential victim, becomes the young men's victimizer. If she, rather than the young men, is the predator, it is hard to see how her “wrath” is justified.

Either possibility for reading the quotation, “lust of” or “lust for,” remains problematic. Indeed, if anyone seems worthy of blame, it is the party who entices, not the party who is enticed or, at the very least, both parties are equally to be blamed. Part of the problem derives from the ambiguity of the quotation that is supposed to indicate the theme of the movie, which, of course, is anything but a small error in a work of art.

If anything, the theme of the film seems to be simply that mere attraction to the beauty of the opposite sex can kill a youth. Neither J. D., who offers Eden a ride (possibly for ulterior reasons), nor Elliott, who never encounters Eden during his search for J. D., nor Jason, who simply approaches Eden, does anything to threaten her or in any way acts aggressively toward her. Nevertheless, she kills both J. D. and Jason, and the audience never learns Elliott's fate.

By themselves, the young men are in no danger. They are friends, not foes. They clown with one another, simulating fisticuffs, but they never hurt one another or came close to doing so. Their fighting is a mere pretense, consisting of friendly mock attacks and simulated counterattacks. Separated from one another, they are endangered by the sole member of the opposite sex they encounter on the dark streets.

Eden, the sole female character, is deadly. To be seduced by the charms of the opposite sex is dangerous; in fact, it can be fatal. It is better that men resist feminine beauty in favor of the company of their same-sex friends. Romance involving the opposite sex is dangerous; same-sex friendship is not. Beautiful young women break the bonds between men, disrupting homosocial relationships. Brothers are trustworthy; women are not. These seem to be the ultimate, prepubescent themes, or lessons, of Eden.