The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

Directors Goldfine and Geller tell their story with such engaged confidence that we are swept along to its wild end. Move over, Charles Darwin, when it comes to great tales about the Galapagos, you've got company.

FASCINATING!... A captivating tale of trying to escape from civilization, yet never really succeeding.

Has more twists than your average thriller, and it's twice as exciting!

4 STARS (OUT OF 4)! Documentarians Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine go into this film with two aces already in hand—a remarkable real-life story...and an amazing cache of home movies made by the inhabitants. They turn in THE MOST IRRESISTIBLE FILM SO FAR OF 2014.

ABSORBING, SUSPENSEFUL! A STORY THIS WELL TOLD DESERVES TO BE RELISHED! Goldfine and Geller pace and structure The Galapagos Affair like the true-crime tale that it is, its mysteries rich and involving, its characters enduring in the imagination long after the film has ended.

With characteristic poise and intelligence, Goldfine and Geller spin the yarn very well, balancing eccentricity with accessibility. Their film makes judicious use of its subjects’ home movies and of Ritter and Strauch’s usefully articulate writings (read, respectively, by Thomas Kretschmann and Cate Blanchett). Blessed with a great cast of human characters, they also pay keen attention to various beasts, some more domesticated than others.

FASCINATING! A stranger-than-fiction gem.

The Galapagos Affair has more going for it than most of the claptrap filling multiplexes right now.... A good historical documentary should tell an interesting story in a cohesive way and arouse our interest, even if we know nothing about the subject matter. The Galapagos Affair does just that.

A darkly amusing historical documentary about the fruitless search for paradise on Earth by vainglorious, world-weary dreamers who set themselves above, and apart from, the rest of humanity. The heart of the film...is a hybrid of juicy period soap opera and 'Survivor.'

There's big trouble in paradise in The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, a true-life story so rife with melodrama, exotic lifestyles, sexual intrigue and suspicious deaths that it's surprising that no film has been made about it until now. This inescapably fascinating documentary...combines contemporary material with fantastic film footage taken at the time and excellent dramatic readings by a fine international cast.

A riveting reconstruction of paradise gone to hell....Plays out like a game of tropical ‘Clue’ writ large....Cate Blanchett is marvelous.

A story with characters worthy of the richest fiction—including a decadent baroness intent on building a luxury hotel—climaxing in a violent, still unsolved mystery. Nearly a decade in the making, this remarkable documentary recounts the strange and sordid Floreana tale using the actual journals and diaries of the key players, here brought to life by an all-star voice cast. It’s a haunting exploration of wildness, human nature and our struggles to escape what perhaps is inevitable.

Intriguing… a gripping real-life story… Sex, violence, bitter conflict and an unresolved murder mystery are the defining aspects of its story of how a plan to set up a new life in a idyllic island location goes so badly wrong.

A thrilling and well-crafted documentary about intrigue, murder, and the failure of utopian ideals.