Ari Aster’s Latest ‘Eddington’ Is a Frenzied, Absorbing Nightmare

Ari Aster’s Latest ‘Eddington’ Is a Frenzied, Absorbing Nightmare

By Alex McPherson

Supremely uncomfortable yet ever-watchable, director Ari Aster’s “Eddington” looks back at the chaos of 2020 with a savagely enjoyable microscope.

Our story unfolds within the fictional, sleepy town of Eddington, New Mexico, during May 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic is in full swing, and Eddington residents struggle to navigate this new reality. Some succumb to conspiracy theories, others give into coronavirus paranoia, and everyone is glued to their smartphones.

The sickly allure of echo chambers is impossible to resist amid the cultural and social rifts exposed by an invisible enemy that’s infecting the world. There’s talk of a resource-hogging data center being constructed on the edge of town, the building of which Eddington’s incumbent, left-leaning mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) makes a core (positive!) feature of his campaign. 

Ted has also instituted a mask mandate for the area. This greatly frustrates the insecure, right-leaning, and asthmatic police chief Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix). Joe struggles at his job and endures a home life where a sense of “control” has all but slipped away.

His wife, Louise (a haunted Emma Stone), refuses intimacy because of past trauma and has been drawn into the world of influencers, specifically a cultish, self-help guru named Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler). 

Joe and Louise share their house with Louise’s mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), who has fully given into “Plandemic” lunacy and is encouraging Louise to go further down the rabbit hole of online BS. Joe is nearing the end of his rope — he believes that something needs to be done to “save the soul” of Eddington or, more importantly, give his unstable self a feeling of power and so-called masculine purpose. 

After Joe has a tense debate with Ted over mask-wearing at a grocery store — an elderly man was just kicked out for not wearing a mask — he’s inspired to run for mayor himself, on a platform that demonizes Ted in darkly humorous fashion.

It’s all about “restoring the kindness of Eddington” after all, no matter the exaggerated political signage (complete with misspellings) and inflamed rhetoric. Joe’s anger at Ted extends beyond his politics, though: Ted once dated Louise, and rumors say their relationship did not end well.

Then George Floyd is killed, and everything is thrown further off its axis. Small protests grip Eddington, and Joe can barely keep things under control. Well-meaning but half-informed youths stand up for racial justice, and their eyes are on Michael (Micheal Ward), Eddington’s only Black police officer and perhaps one of the only Black people in Eddington, period. 

The pandemic, Black Lives Matter, fear-mongering media, anarchists, predators, and the warring campaigns of two egotistical men are all a lot for the town to handle. It’s only a matter of time before things go wildly off the rails.

This is an Aster joint after all, the mad lad who concocted such trippily unsettling works as “Midsommar” and the stylistically envelope-pushing “Beau is Afraid.” 

“Eddington” aims closer to home than those films — dramatizing a time whose trauma we’re still grappling with today in heightened, sometimes inflammatory (and polarizing) fashion.

But despite structural and pacing issues resulting from Aster tackling so many hot-button topics, the film, on the whole, accurately reflects our ostensibly doomed present. 

Aster captures a society overflowing with misinformation, emphasizing the pursuit of power, direction, and attention (under the guise of being noble) at the expense of self. Extremes on all sides will collide in train-wreck-catastrophe if, Aster warns, we continue down the same connected-but-isolated path as these characters.

A jolly view of humanity, to be sure, but one that’s rooted in truth despite Aster’s absurdist proclivities and resolute lack of subtlety.

Aster might not be the most psychologically incisive filmmaker out there to tackle the horrors of 2020, retaining a preference for madness over deeper reflection. “Eddington” can be uneven in its shock-value humor and sometimes broad characterization, with Aster throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

The film eschews emotional attachment for blunt-force social commentary that condemns our terminally online existence and our propensity for hate — ramming home the ways in which malleable minds can become warped; personal drama rendered violently political. 

Phoenix, yet again, gives a compelling performance that’s equal parts darkly amusing and disturbing. “Eddington” centers its focus on Joe and his de-evolution to baser, reactionary instincts.

Aster takes pains to illustrate how each facet of Joe’s life is breaking down, emphasizing his pitiful attempts at reconciling with Louise and carrying out his job as sheriff and would-be mayor, each slight building upon the other as Joe takes all the wrong lessons.

He makes his personal vengeance against society become larger than himself. As he becomes increasingly monstrous, though, Joe also becomes more recognizable on an instinctive level. Aster just takes his actions, and the actions of those around him, to extremes within this doomed microcosm.

Almost everyone is put in the crosshairs of Aster’s satire. Teens loudly but in a half-assed way deal with their White guilt (some virtue signaling for the sake of getting laid). Ted’s performative politicking masks a certain darkness, and people like Louise, become swept up into the world of cults masked as self-improvement.

That “Eddington” puts these characters next to antivaxxers and other right-wing conspiracy theorists might imply conflation, but the film primarily spotlights the technologies that drive them.

Indeed, social media infects these characters’ daily lives to an extent that they’re not aware of, taking control of their impulses while innocent parties are frequently caught in the middle.

Darius Khondji’s crisp cinematography finds moments of stark beauty amid the arid surroundings, positioning smartphones as a blunt, unnatural intrusion into the frame. Bobby Krlic and Daniel Pemberton’s score furthers a sense of dread punctuated by atonal jolts, reflecting the volatile nature of the story itself.

“Eddington” is most effective in the big picture, sacrificing digging deeper into any one topic for building a swirling, chaotic mélange of everything happening at once, eventually reaching a near-fever-dream pitch of violence and cinder-black comedy.

The film’s free-flow structure can drag in places as it assembles the pieces. This is largely due to the inherent unlikability of most of the characters and a screenplay that, for all its shrewd effectiveness, is hit-or-miss with its “provocative” humor. 

Flaws aside, “Eddington is still a valiantly unhinged effort from Aster that’s willing to take real risks. Some will hate it, some will love it, and while its more haphazard elements are distracting, the experience is never less than interesting — a modern western with no savior, just a steady march towards Armageddon.

“Eddington” is a 2025 dark comedy – contemporary western directed by Ari Aster and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Deirdre O’Connell, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward, Cameron Mann and Matt Gomez Hidaka. It is rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, language, and graphic nudity. Its run time is 2 hours, 28 minutes. It opened in theatres July 18. Alex‘s Grade: Rating: B+

‘Eddington’ Confuses in Look Back at Pandemic Boiling Points in 2020

‘Eddington’ Confuses in Look Back at Pandemic Boiling Points in 2020

By Lynn Venhaus

Self-indulgent claptrap, “Eddington” is an interminable contemporary western-dark comedy that writer-director Ari Aster can’t figure out how to end, nor has he given us any reason to care about what happens, presenting an overstuffed, confusing narrative involving a laundry list of anxiety-inducing crackpot-isms.

Pick a lane, dude. Aster, not a director whose work I have ever admired – or understood, has attempted to give us a snapshot of a small town dealing with the uneasiness of the coronavirus shut-down.

The tagline is “Hindsight is 2020.” Clever and worthy of looking back five years later. But he’d rather muddy up a narrative with stray targets, weak plot threads and aim for grievances that may or not be effective.

So, instead of an incisive account, we try to figure out the purpose of various peculiar characters who are in a disconcerting series of opaque situations.

At times, it captures that paranoid feeling of those uncertain early days of the pandemic, and the unnerving isolation and fear, but Aster mostly fritters away any clarity by tossing too many things together, mostly lightning rods that can stir things up.  

Namely, the unhoused, anti-maskers, conspiracy theorists, racists, privileged white kids grappling with societal issues, Black Lives Matter supporters, national outrage over George Flood’s inexcusable death, fear-mongering media, social media feeding frenzies, vapid influencers, anarchists, ‘Antifa’ supporters, white supremists, red state hysteria, QAnon believers, pedophiles, predators, bureaucratic small-town officials, small business owners, indigenous people’s lands, law enforcement, guns, state mandates, corporate greed, and those profiting off human misery.

Not to mention public health attempts to stop the spread of a rampant virus that wants to destroy us, and those whose lack of disregard for fellow humans under the guise of individual rights is reckless. 

But consequences matter little in Aster’s lawless world where good people are trying to maintain an order and are met with lack-of-information resistance.

Aster’s plots tend to meander but usually have a common denominator – things that can spin quickly out of control. Like he did in the idiosyncratic nearly unwatchable “Beau Is Afraid,” he ratchets up absurdities as people go through personal crises and makes a mockery of real issues.

His horror dramas “Midsommar” and “Hereditary” were designed to shock, and I can’t figure out his intentions here. He likes to be weird just because in his world, rules of form, function and ordinary behavior don’t apply, so he throws things on screen to see what sticks.

Oscar-winning Joaquin Phoenix delivers his customary commitment to character in an excellent performance as Sheriff Joe Cross, whose life is about to unravel in predictable and unexpected ways.

Most frustrating of all is that Aster wastes a strong collection of talent – including Austin Butler, barely making a blip as Vernon Jefferson Peak, a charismatic evangelical zealot type preaching about evil authoritarians and what he perceives to be injustices to the common man. He has amassed many followers through viral videos and in-person rallies.

One of his fans is Cross’s wife, Louise (an underused Emma Stone), who has had some sort of mental health trauma that makes assimilation into society difficult.

 She has a controlling mother who lives with them during the shutdown, interfering with their marriage and their beliefs, and spreads wack-a-doodle theories suspicious about the government. Deidre O’Connell is the meddling mom Dawn. An opportunist, her character does a 180 when it’s beneficial to her.

Pedro Pascal is measured as the popular and successful mayor, Ted Garcia, who is raising his teenage son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) on his own. 

His son and his friends, eager to hang out, disobey social distancing rules and get involved in the Black Lives Matter protests. His friend Brian (Cameron Mann) is always filming on his phone for Instagram, trying to get ‘gotcha’ videos.

Garcia runs a bar, and is open to a tech company coming to his fictional tiny town of about 2500 people for future jobs.

He now must deal with a challenger, Joe, whose mayoral run is often viewed as comical and a nuisance. His two deputies, Michael (Micheal Ward) and Guy (Luke Grimes, who played the beloved Kayce Dutton on “Yellowstone”) are loyal and steadfast, and try to maintain peace. But are also directed by a boss with ulterior motives.

Then, there is this shady group of unnamed operatives that come to town with wreaking havoc on their minds. No explanation here as to who they are.

The town becomes a battleground for free speech and heightens racial tensions.

And the list of plot threads goes on, and on and on. The movie should have culminated in a never-ending shootout where the asthmatic, illness-impaired sheriff survives many automatic bullets and mayhem for a later end result that is hard to believe, but not in Aster’s world view.

Outside of a few skilled performers making good impressions in these daffy offbeat roles, this movie has little to offer if you seek a satisfying story. 

Why I maintained hope that this movie would not be a senseless bloodbath with little effect is beyond me. Enter at your own risk.

“Eddington” is a 2025 dark comedy – contemporary western directed by Ari Aster and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Deirdre O’Connell, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward, Cameron Mann and Matt Gomez Hidaka. It is rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, language, and graphic nudity. Its run time is 2 hours, 28 minutes. It opened in theatres July 18. Lynn’s Grade: D