Eden 2013

In 1994, Hyun Jae—an 18-year-old Korean-American girl living with her immigrant parents in New Mexico—finds herself pulled into a nightmare after a night out. What starts as a casual swipe at a bar turns dangerous when the man she meets has a fake police badge and offers her a ride. Realizing the danger, Jae tries to escape, but she is captured, bound, tapegagged, and transported in the trunk of another car. Her world shifts in an instant as she is drugged and taken to a hidden warehouse, where she endures the stripping away of any sense of safety: her braces removed, her personal belongings seized, and a tracking anklet fastened to her ankle. The woman who will become her captor and tormentor is Bob, a corrupt law enforcement official who leads a sex trafficking operation, and his volatile, drug-addicted enforcer, Vaughn. Bob renames Jae Eden and delivers a stark message: he has information about her parents, and harm will come to them if she does not cooperate. Two days are given for Eden to adapt to this new life before she is forced into the operation.

What follows is a brutal, structured routine designed to break her and remake her into a cog in the system. Eden endures daily pregnancy tests, is coerced into appearing in pornographic material, and is prostituted to paying clients. During her first prostitution job, Eden cannot contain her growing defiance and attacks the client, initiating a desperate attempt to escape once more. She is recaptured, handcuffed, and forced to endure an overnight stay with her hands bound in a tub filled with ice. The power dynamic within the warehouse tightens when Vaughn publicly confronts Bob, ending with Bob slapping Vaughn as the operation’s control moves more clearly into Vaughn’s hands.

A year slips by, and Eden has learned to survive as best she can inside the operation. She befriends another girl, Priscilla, who is surprised to learn Eden’s age—she is almost 19, not the child everyone assumes. Priscilla hints at a chilling truth: something happens to girls who become “too old.” Before Eden can ask for details, Priscilla herself is suddenly taken away. The web of control grows even more personal when Eden notices Svetlana, Vaughn’s trusted enforcer, has obtained the class ring Eden received from her father on the day of the abduction. In a tense confrontation, Eden tries to retrieve it by force, only to be restrained by Vaughn and another enforcer. Vaughn compels Eden to swallow the ring and then, in a grim turn, invites her to help oversee the operation’s daily accounting. Eden’s role begins to shift away from the seedy side of the business toward logistical work, and she is increasingly trusted to answer phones, supervise, and help direct operations, allowing her to withdraw somewhat from the worst abuses.

As Eden’s day-to-day work expands, Bob is shown leading a drug-trafficking seminar, but his authority is challenged when detectives question him about the kidnapping of a missing deputy and a landowner—the very people he killed earlier in Eden’s story. Later, Eden and Vaughn encounter Bob again to dispose of the bodies—Svetlana’s included—by the lake, where Vaughn brutally kills Bob, a cold-blooded act born from fear and a need to cover up his own complicity.

The operation continues to hollows of its cruelty, and Eden’s vigilance remains crucial. A moment at a house owned by a man named Mario reveals a horrifying secret: Eden recognizes Mario as the person who had transported her to the warehouse in the trunk. Inside a room filled with baby beds, she discovers Priscilla is pregnant, a detail that underscores the true price of the trafficking scheme—her baby would be sold. Vaughn presses Eden to prove her loyalty by killing a girl in the desert, but she is stopped at the last moment by Vaughn himself, a reminder of how dangerous and unstable this world is.

When one of Vaughn’s enforcers flips—likely because of Eden’s warning or the sting she orchestrated—Eden is forced to pack the other girls for a move. The operation’s leaders plan to relocate to Dubai, and Eden sees what could be her last chance to escape. In a desperate bid for freedom, she sabotages Vaughn by spraying his meth pipe with chemicals, causing him to inhale a fatal dose, and she severs her ankle bracelet to remove herself from the operation’s reach. With money and drugs in hand, she heads to Mario’s house, determined to free Priscilla. Mario resists, but Eden injects him with drugs and kills him, finally allowing her to locate Priscilla. Eden reveals the devastating news that Priscilla’s baby has already been sold, and together they flee the house.

In a tense, final moment of longing and resolve, Eden and Priscilla escape to a pay phone and she calls her mother—the voice she hasn’t heard in a year—reaching out across the distance to reconnect with a family she thought she might never see again. The story closes on a note of fragile hope, with Eden stepping back into the world she left behind, carrying the weight of what she survived and the faint possibility of reclaiming her life.