Bchristoball I just saw this movie on Netflix and I absolutely loved it. Unlike some who have posted reviews here, I thought it was a realistic portrayal of a real-life human trafficking story. The thing to remember watching this is that IT's A MOVIE ... Every single detailed cannot be included. For instance, the opening scenes where Eden gives her mother some pullback over curfew time, sneaks outside to smoke, engages in underage drinking, and leaves with/kisses a guy she just met seemed to be a summary or microcosm of her rebelliousness and permiscuousness. No where did the director/writer imply that Eden was perfectly innocent as some have suggested.I thought the writer did a good job compressing likely a ton of pertinent experiences into a movie. The underground sex-slave culture was successfully portrayed as well. I, myself, saw no need for additional sex scenes to sell help sell concept, it's rather obvious. This movie has a good balance.of drama and gore. The Sheriff pimp was so despicable it was easy to despise him, while his helper "Vaughn" (along with others) thought of the whole operation merely as work, showing no guilt or remorse for their actions. I also liked that the global aspect of trafficking was addressed as the trafficking group's operation extended to Dubai.I would have liked to have seen the outcome of the other trafficking workers, who didn't die (e.g. Nurse lady). We're left to assume they made it to Dubai. And yes, there were slight overlooks (albeit present in every movie), such as characters who died rather quickly after being injected with unidentified drugs. But overall, a really good movie that I plan to buy.As a hobbyist music composer I have to say that I really enjoyed the music score, not overdone, but just enough to set the atmosphere of each scene. I love how the ambient guitars and keyboards provided a lush backdrop for the sex and drug theme.

ktyson9426 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.

timlin-4 This is one of those disturbing female-produced coming-of-age fantasies, but instead of the heroine being raped by her dad, or by her lesbian teacher, or by a vampire, this time it's by pimps. (Yes, the pimp is even a moody cute guy) And it's biographical, written by a survivor! As usual every detail of the plot rings false, and it's impossible to relate to or become engrossed in the drama. It's a story of emotion, reality is barely an afterthought. That said, these movies are usually decently enough made (these girls are readers, and daddy paid for film school), they feature a cute girl who can act well enough, and they do indeed have some emotional power. But these forced tears are thin and annoying

asc85 While the 2013 film year is only about half way over, I am almost positive that this will be in my "Best 10" list for the year. As others have already noted, I was completely surprised on how good this movie was, and I will say that had this been a true "Hollywood" movie with name stars and marketing muscle, this would be under strong consideration for Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. Perhaps it still has a chance for the independent Spirit awards, but we shall see. I did notice on IMDb that it previously won the "Audience Awards" at SXSW, Milan, San Diego and Seattle, so it has clearly touched a cord among many who have seen it.I felt the direction of this picture by Megan Griffiths was outstanding. It is a difficult tightrope to walk to present this film so that we see how bad it is, but not so bad that it becomes gratuitous and too upsetting to watch. I think she accomplished that.We usually see Jamie Chung in movies strictly as eye candy. However, she handles this very difficult role (where she is on camera for almost the entire film) in a very understated and believable way. It is hard for Asian women to find good roles in American cinema, but maybe this puts her in a better position to find more serious, meaty roles in the future.I've been surprised at the polarization of user reviews on IMDb. Usually these independent, art-house films receive universal acclaim on this site, and God help the one person who disagrees. This time, it appears people either love it or hate it. Put me down on the side of loving it.