Film Review: Eddington

Eddington
Director: Ari Aster
A24, Square Peg
In Theaters: 07.18.2025

Humans. None of God’s creatures come as unpredictable or untrustworthy as us. Scratch our backs one minute, and we’ll lacerate yours the next. At the peak of the food chain, the human species has utilized raw cruelty to gloat all the way to the top, whether through advanced technology or sheer mindfuckery. And no one in the modern age has quite mastered the horrors of mankind than A24’s night terror darling Ari Aster. From his short film beginnings of incestuous psychological horror to his big break supernatural thrillers like Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster has become the poster child for cinema nightmares. When rumors circulated last year that he was in the post-production of his fourth full-length feature, I and possibly thousands of other terror aficionados were truly excited, to say the least. So Mr. Aster, what series of dread and fright have you put us in now? Unspeakable evils of the occult? Hellish, contemporary depictions of familial trauma? Another penis monster? Nope, he’s dropped us off in the fictional desert town of Eddington, New Mexico during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh no…

Eddington centers around nerdy, secretly sinister Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix, Beau is Afraid) who dabbles with injustice and power when he spontaneously announces that he’ll be running for mayor against the incumbent (and his wife’s ex-lover) Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us). Hell begins to take hold of the rural town as misinformation and political polarization pits neighbor against neighbor, where no one is safe or trusted. Trailing along his campaign, Joe’s wife (Emma Stone, Poor Things) begins to fancy a radical, cult-following televangelist (Austin Butler, Elvis) whose tech-bro sermons reflect the constant airstrike of conspiracy theories spewing out of social media and news stations. All of this leads to a feudal powder keg ready to explode!

Those who are familiar with Aster’s line of work better leave all expectations at the door. To me, Eddington is going through an identity crisis… in the most neutral of ways. The film itself is categorized as a comedy Western. Although dark humor is peppered throughout like birdshot and the Southern gothic setting is Neo-Western as hell (complete with a gritty, modern take on the cowboy shootout trope at the end), there’s more genres where that came from. If anything, it’s heavily a political drama! Having the story take place during the summer of 2020 dials up the uncertainty, given that everyone is already on pins and needles around their fellow man. The political spectrum shifts into tribalism, showing the audience the worst of both sides. Conservatives are showcased as QAnon anti-vaxxers believing every hoax about how the Coronavirus was developed, while liberals are consumed by white guilt and only participate in social activism when it benefits them. Come to think of it, this could be a horror flick just based on how scarily accurate this was…

Eddington is the best portrait of everything wrong with modern-day American politics. In the past decade, we’ve seen a major decline in national morale and overall patriotism, reducing our two-party system to a shrug of the shoulders to the lesser evil. I think a movie like Eddington is necessary not only to poke fun at these circumstances, but also to make people take in the gravity of the situation we’re facing daily. Do I think some points in the film felt redundant, especially when covering a global crisis that we’re still feeling the effects of five years later? Sure, but I think it’s that type of reflection that needs to be brought up. To look back and think to ourselves, “Maybe we should’ve worked together.” Because I’m telling you now, the big baddie is neither one of the running candidates, nor is it Butler’s shoehorned cult leader (which I think should’ve been explored more). Without spoiling too much, the movie ends with the distant hum and eerie glow of a new data-processing plant. The bad guy is those Obsidian screens in our pocket, looking outwards with one unblinking eye only, capturing disdain and falsehoods. In layman’s terms, if there’s no pics, did it even happen? —Alton Barnhart

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