Ever since the viral sensation of his short film, The Strange Things About the Johnsons (2011), Ari Aster has been known as a provocateur of taboo subjects. Aster wrote the short after discussing divisive subjects for a thesis project at the AFI Conservatory. It was disturbing, uncomfortable, and had left many wondering, “why,” concerning an incestuous relationship between a son and his father.
Fourteen years later, you may be asking yourself the same question, as Aster’s fourth directorial effort, Eddington (2025), focuses on the summer of 2020, as the height of COVID wreaks havoc on a small New Mexico town. It’s clear that for Aster, no subject will ever be taboo, even if it makes everyone in the room uncomfortable. Whether that is done sincerely or poking and prodding for the sake of a reaction, it fits nicely with Aster’s filmography, eliciting discomforting reactions.
Eddington is no exception, as it’s a film blistering with rich black comedy that tragically examines how badly America has devolved. It’s imperfect in how it goes about that era of inscrutability. Like Homer Simpson’s makeup gun that fires a messy, chaotic projectile of colors, Aster takes shots at the extreme spectrums (conservative conspiracies, anti-mask policies, BLM protests, liberal performatism, cult leaders)—everyone catches a stray bullet. Yet, no film this year has felt as bold a cinematic experience, anachronistic in its sensibilities, and wildly untethered in its direction as Eddington.
Aster lenses Eddington as a modern Western, as the genre lends the town of Eddington to the isolated small towns you’d see in a classic Western. The Wild West has been conquered, and there’s no more land to discover; the true Manifest Destiny for the twenty-first century is Big Tech conquering our engagement and attention.
Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) patrols his quiet town, disobeying mask mandates, even when he’s crossing into jurisdictional lines, as he argues in the beginning with Pueblo officers over what constitutes obeying mask policies on Pueblo territory. Instead of facing a criminal gunman or outlaw, he dukes it out over mask mandates and an incumbent mayoral candidate, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Garcia is backed by a giant tech conglomerate, hoping to develop a data center in town, despite reservations due to its high consumption of natural resources.
It’s May of 2020. The town of Eddington is populated by characters ranging from Joe’s grief-stricken wife, Louis (Emma Stone), his mother-in-law, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), Garcia’s mischievous son, Erik (Matt Gomez Hidaka), his friend, Brian (Cameron Mann), and Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), a student leader to a group against white supremacy, in which Brain pretends to form an alliance for his self-interest. One day, after Joe witnesses an elderly man being ejected from a supermarket for not wearing a mask, he feels a sense of self-righteousness, pleading for people to open their hearts, and vows to run for mayor as the anti-establishment candidate.
Already, this is Aster’s most sprawling narrative. The town becomes the petri dish for which Aster examines each character’s disconnection, how their lack of empathy leads to siloed chambers, confirming biases of their distorted world. Joe becomes convinced of his chances for Mayor, at the expense of continually neglecting his wife, who spends her days making creepy-looking dolls and spiralling into internet rabbit holes, one cult led by a charismatic Vernon (Austin Butler). Joe’s actions set in motion a series of violent actions and reactions that’ll transform his town, for better and worse.
All of Joe’s insecurities set off incendiary actions, as the narrative jerks to spotlighting social reforms (like BLM) and cultural narratives (COVID disbelief and Antifa) being weaponized by self-centered people. This yields to the absurd ridiculousness of human nature in Aster’s world, resulting in violently bleak yet humorous results.
Ever since his cameo in Beau (2011), in which he told a confused Bill Mayo, “You’re fucked,” that message has been metaphorically stamped on all of his characters, as they flail and flop like a fish on land. Mel Brooks famously put it: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” From Beau is Afraid (2023) to Eddington, it’s clear that Aster’s sense of humor is drawn from characters spiraling from self-destructive choices they’re unaware are leading to their inevitable doom. There is a wicked sense of sadism in watching his characters fumble the ball, yet it never comes off as misanthropic. He imbues his characters with tremendous human inflections and behaviors born from vulnerabilities that can only come from an empathetic place.
This is Phoenix’s second collaboration with Aster; between his anxiety-ridden, sex-starved mama’s boy in Beau and his insecure, easily exposed Joe, Phoenix excels playing weak, pathetic morons who trip over themselves before they leave the starting line. Phoenix brings a tangible, poignant quality to his characters, grounding them in a hyper-realistic manner where you can discern them from people in real life (in the case of Joe, people you never want to meet). Bumbling and antagonism don’t often go hand-in-hand; Phoenix’s performance is effortless, intersecting the two, falling in line with his 2019 Joker persona of an inadequate figure people don’t take seriously.
Pascal is equally great as the competent mayoral candidate who toes the line with status-quo politics that are coded liberal and faux-social justice, but displays genuine disdain from Joe’s opposition, even as he becomes a willing puppet for the corporation behind the data center.
Some of the supporting cast become pivotal characters, as Mann’s Brain is someone who weaponizes Sarah’s interest in social reforms for police and Black Lives Matter as a way to be in a relationship, even when it comes to denouncing his whiteness (leading to a hysterical scene with his parents). His significance becomes prominent as Brian is directed to be a blank slate, striking wherever opportunism sees itself. Mann’s performance is subdued, which emphasizes his final impact.
One of Joe’s deputies, Michael (Michael Ward), plays one of the more level-headed, rationally composed characters of a black police officer who has dreams of leadership positions in the Eddington Police Department. His rift comes into play with a past relationship with Sarah, who blatantly accuses Michael of being on the wrong side, never asking his perspective on the BLM protests. Subtly, Michael sees Sarah wanting to weaponize his identity to further her agenda for police reform, but he remains steadfast in his principles. Even as Joe manipulates Michael’s history to be used against him, Ward’s steely, calm disposition shines like an impenetrable rock in a volatile sea of yelling, accusations, and violence slung at him.
Stone and Butler feel underutilized. Their scenes feel sparse and tangential to a more opaque narrative that is never developed to an extent that feels pertinent. Butler’s Vernon has the swagger and charm in one pivotal dinner scene, as he visits Joe and illuminates his background of abuse at the hands of his parents. It links to Louise’s traumatic past, something her mother shifts blame to a prior relationship with Garcia (enabling Joe to prop up Louise’s trauma as a campaign tactic). These threads feel thinly conceived, more in service of a message than characters reacting out of internal logic.
The villainous forces Aster usually focuses on are of the otherworldly and ethereal, rooted in mysticism and a religious cult. The Swedish cult in Midsommar (2019) overlaps with the cult group brought on by Paimon in Hereditary (2018)—they manipulate emotionally vulnerable people into a state of fear and weakened mental fortitude. Here, Aster’s forces are rooted in the real world and have already infected everyone. Characters doomscroll and caress their phones in times of stress and uncertainty, hoping to make sense of their skewed realities. Instead of looking at the people in front of them, they turn to the bright fluorescent screen, like a vape pen delivering dopamine hits.
The film doesn’t uncover anything new about living through COVID, but replicates the isolating and uncertain anxiety prevalent, as most of us doomscrolled for updates and news. Tech companies like Netflix and TikTok benefited from people staying home, spending their time consuming content and making stars out of creators. Aster astutely demonstrates his expert craft in connecting his themes of palpable anxiety fueled by powerful forces effectively, as characters are often glued to a screen or consuming an influx of information, unbeknownst to the helping hand tech corporations have played in affecting our psyches.
As a filmmaker, he levels his visual direction in working with legendary cinematographer Darius Khondji. One sequence finds Joe in the middle of a heightened video game, where he wields a machine gun, looking for Antifa-coded militants dispatched by the second half to kill Joe. The New Mexico desert looks pristine and beautiful.
It may be difficult for folks to spend time with a character so self-deluded and unsympathetic as Joe, but you’re not rooting for Joe. You’re watching a person self-destruct due to his bruised ego, which sadly brings others down to his level as a result. The same way you watch Dani succumb to being the May Queen. The ripple effects reflect how much we’ve been dragged down by the polarization of an online-pilled bunch that sees themselves as the Joe Crosses, when really, they’re a data strain for big tech.
Aster approaches all of his characters with plenty of curiosity, but is anchored by the stark, depressing, and hilarious accountability they deserve for their actions. The third act’s escalations of violence culminate in a sort of cathartic ending for Joe that feels fitting for such a despicably sad person.
Eddington doesn’t excavate anything new that hasn’t been unearthed from 2020, yet Aster recognizes we haven’t reckoned with that period properly, as the deceptive forces of social algorithms and “For You” pages have commodified the human experience to being battles of the most extreme ideas. Perhaps that’s too overwrought for a nearly two-and-a-half-hour western in which an insecure white sheriff must assert his shattered dominance in the most ineffectual way, but no director is working at the lengths Aster is when it comes to visualizing our shared anxieties in a cathartic, heightened manner.
Aster’s sensibilities have calcified his works as uncomfortable and unsavory experiences. Hollywood and the world seem content with moving away from 2020, relegating it to a blip that happened. It does feel like an afterthought when a lifetime of events comes and goes into the ether of social threats and comment chains. Aster skewers our realities into raw nerve endings that have been left to fester and never heal.
Revisiting old wounds often results in agonizing pain. Movies like Eddington aren’t meant to be entertaining, but I had a helluva fun time laughing at the inevitable hellscape we find ourselves in. After we’ve exhausted all the facilities of emotion and energies, perhaps all we have left is laughter, of a more macabre form.
Review Courtesy of Amritpal Rai
Feature Image Credit to A24 via LA Times
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