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Ari Aster would like you to go back in time. The writer-director of Hereditary and Midsommar doesn’t need you to travel too far. Just five years. You probably remember a few of the details from May 2020: social distancing, social-media diatribes, swabs being thrust violently into nasal cavities, “I Can’t Breathe,” uprisings in the streets. It’s crazy to think all of this took place half a decade ago. It’s even crazier to ignore the creeping sensation that we’re still trapped in the moment when social stress fractures became chasms, as if doomed to repeat it like some cursed variation of Groundhog’s Day.
Eddington is technically a period piece, given that it unfolds over several days in the aforementioned mensis horribilis. The movie doesn’t particularly feel like one, however. Take away the Covid masks, and this mix of modern-day Western, political satire, and several other genres mashed into one manic panic attack could be set last week. Same divisiveness, same fingerpointing, same inability to agree on a consensual reality, same constantly present anxiety, same President. As they say in Cannes, where Aster — finally at the festival with a competition title — just premiered his latest waking nightmare: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
In the small New Mexico town that gives this lit-fuse film its title, trouble’s a-brewin’. The pandemic lockdowns are in full swing, but town sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix, channeling the same hapless mode he displayed in Aster’s Beau Is Afraid) isn’t keen on masks. Specifically, he’s not down with the idea of enforcing a statewide mandate that folks wear them, because personal freedoms matter more than public safety, also the virus is a hoax, yadda yadda yadda. The mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), tries to be patient with this officer of the law, but the two men have a tempestuous history. Some of it has to do with a possible data center set to be built in Eddington. Some of it has to do with Cross’s wife Lou (Emma Stone), who once dated Garcia. A lot of it has to do with diametrically opposed viewpoints made even worse by Covid and the culture wars.
After a skirmish at the local supermarket, Cross senses an opportunity to capitalize on the frustrations of some citizens. He impulsively announces, via a Facebook livestream, that he’s running for mayor against Garcia in an upcoming election. The smear campaigning begins immediately. Neither his wife nor his conspiracy theorist of a mother-in-law (The Penguin‘s Deidre O’Connell) approves of Joe’s newfound obsession about politics. Especially since Lou has become curiously interested in an internet muckraker-slash-crackpot guru named Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler) and his ideas about vast rings of powerful pedophiles pulling all of the strings behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, a teenager names Brian (Cameron Mann) becomes “radicalized” by the Black Lives Matter slogans and George Floyd protests, mostly because a young woman named Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle) is reading a book by Angela Davis. Soon, he’s leading protests on Main Street and going on about white privilege. Cue broken windows, outside agitators, flame-stoking viral videos, accusations of Antifa false-flag operations — you know the drill. Brian’s best friend, Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka), who’s also the mayor’s son, has eyes for Sarah as well. This rivalry would have repercussions.
So will Joe’s attempt to suggest that his fellow candidate is a sexual predator, a gambit that spectacularly backfires on him. He’s soon pushed to the brink, which leads to… well, let’s just say things fall apart and the center — what little was left of it — cannot hold. For the bulk of Eddington‘s first half, the primary mode is broad-swipe satirical, with Aster & Co. lashing out almost indiscriminately at a host of contemporary archetypes: the way-too-online truthers, the faux-spiritual scam artists, the zero-to-woke Gen Z activists, the politicos trading on personal tragedy and carefully calibrated empathy to goose voters. (One of the funniest moments is a throwaway gag in Garcia’s campaign video featuring Pascal tenderly noodling on a piano in the middle of Eddington’s downtown.)
As for Cross, he’s given the full swaggering, swinging-dick cowboy treatment, a reminder that some Great American Caricatures are timeless. He’s also meant to invoke law-and-order blowhards like Arizona’s Joe Arpaio and any number of current opportunistic parasites keen to ride the red-pill wave; that Phoenix juggles all of this and still makes the character feel organically wounded is a testament to his talent. The overall lack of subtlety suits the age Aster is taking to task, though it also makes everything feel slightly wobbly on its feet. The viewpoint is both-sides misanthropy. Jonathan Swift has some notes.
Then a need for a cover-up causes a gear shift into Coen brothers territory, with Joe, his deputies (Michael Ward and Yellowstone‘s Luke Grimes) and a nosy detective (William Belleau) from the Native American sovereignty next door engaging in various shenanigans. Don’t get too attached, however. It’s a feint as well. There’s still one more hand to be played, an unexpected narrative left turn that reveals what may be Eddington‘s true form: a conspiracy thriller for a nation too broken to be mended, too brainwashed to come back from the brink, and too far gone to avoid manifesting its worst wishes and fears. Just because you’re paranoid, etc., etc.
And now you’re fully in an Ari Aster movie, and you suddenly realize that its clothing has been made of the finest sheepskin available and tailored for hiding the wolves already at the door. We’re in nightmare territory again, with the filmmaker bringing out the formalist chops and ability to build upon one unexpected turn after another that’s already made him a cult figure among cinema nerds. A coda reminds us that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as podcast-celebrity fodder. Corruption is now Eddington’s unavoidable currency, but let’s not limit it to one small town in New Mexico. It’s a horror story of much deeper, darker strain — a possession parable in which all of the demons are both civically linked and inner. Aster has given us another movie that chills you, unnerves you and makes you want to crawl out of your skin. You just wish this one didn’t feel so close to being nonfiction.
This review originally ran as part of coverage of the Cannes 2025 Film Festival.
