When news of this film came out, the internet responded with a panicked “too soon!” Was it? On the heels of his surreal epic Beau is Afraid, writer-director Ari Aster continues to probe the anxiety-inducing insanity of modern times in Eddington (2025), this time tackling the collective trauma of the COVID lockdown through a distinctly American lens.
At the height of the pandemic in mid-2020, the small New Mexico town of Eddington is a ghost of itself. Low-key sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), patrolling the deserted streets of his city, is called to the tavern of local mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) to deal with a disturbance — an encounter that draws the battle lines between Cross’s right-leaning “common sense” and Garcia’s progressive political stance. Irked by a mask mandate he doesn’t agree with, the asthmatic Cross is triggered into running against Garcia in the upcoming election. Oh, and there may also be personal reasons: Cross’s troubled wife Louise (Emma Stone) once dated Garcia, and he’s swimming in the paranoia of his mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), a Fox News-addled conspiracy theorist. What starts as a testy rivalry soon escalates, with the help of social media and the George Floyd protests, into a full-on crisis.
Compared to the utterly nerve-wracking Beau if Afraid, this one, while hardly a laugh riot, seems relatively controlled. (Well, up to a point, anyway.) With Phoenix once again going deeply immersive into a role, it’s another intense ride, full of shrill politics and high-pitched confrontation. Aster is less interested in choosing sides than documenting the factions, and while that makes for a weak point of view, that actually serves the record. I wish his take on the strident American mediascape were exaggerated, but in fact it seems pretty accurate, especially to the hysteria of the 2020 lockdown, full of right-wing conspiracy theories, left-wing “virtue signaling,” and performative rage bait. Whether the film is enjoyable or coherent will depend on the viewer, but like Aster’s earlier films, it’s gripping, and all the more so for Phoenix’s all-in performance. Pascal, O’Connell, and Stone are all terrific as well, while Austin Butler stands out as an eccentric cult guru. There may not be much of a message, but that matches the toxic political discourse it is broadly critiquing, a striking record of modern American dysfunction.
