Eddington (2025)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
For Ari Aster’s fans, Eddington is an edgy, provocative assessment of America, post pandemic, that takes a dark, bleak, and satirical look at how we responded to COVID and other social issues in 2020.
Say what you will, but Joaquin Phoenix commits to everything he agrees to do and sees it through to the very end.
There are moments that genuinely made our preview audience gasp out loud. Aster remains quite talented at creating these kind of moments.
NO
What even is this, bro? Aster says a whole lot of surface-level commentary, but like most “smart guys” on social media, he never takes a real stand or lands a meaningful point. Eddington just adds to the noise.
The movie feels smug and self-gratifying, a continuing trend with Aster’s movies where you cannot help but ask, “Who exactly was this made for?”
Lucian Johnston has done fine work as an editor, but he and Ari Aster seem to now bring out the worst in each other.
OUR REVIEW
For me, it may have been when an elderly couple commit suicide by jumping off a cliff to their deaths. When the elderly man survives the fall, we then see his face get bashed in with a massive wooden mallet, ensuring his demise.
This is a scene in Midsommar, the 2019 folk horror film directed by Ari Aster. Sorry to spoil the moment if you haven’t seen it, but this is precisely when I wondered “Who is Ari Aster making movies for?”
In and of itself, the act, as horrific and barbaric as it may be, does move the story forward. But showing it in such gratuitous, graphic detail (the man is literally brought by on a gurney afterward, close to the camera, so you can see the carnage in case you looked away) felt completely unnecessary. That moment took me, and many others I know, completely out of the movie. And we hadn’t even got to the part where the naked man is stuffed into a disemboweled bear carcass.
After pairing with Joaquin Phoenix for the arduous Beau Is Afraid in 2023, Aster and Phoenix team up again - this time with an all-star cast - for Eddington, a movie that takes place in the opening months of the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020.
Eddington, a fictional town in New Mexico, serves as the stage for a movie essentially broken into three main parts: the political discourse part, the murder mystery/cover-up part, and the cat-and-mouse shootout finale. Clearly, Aster has a lot on his mind. And though he largely ignores the fact that COVID has killed millions of people (and has never really gone away though deaths have declined significantly), he positions a disagreement between Phoenix’s anti-mask sheriff, Joe Cross, and Pedro Pascal’s prevention-minded mayor, Ted Garcia, as the spark that ignites a tinderbox of anger and emotion bubbling within the city.
Sharing a tangled backstory involving Cross’ emotionally detached wife Louise (Emma Stone), the two see their tenuous relationship frayed beyond repair as the town of Eddington essentially becomes a petri dish, or microcosm, of all the ills of the world happening at that time.
It is one thing to make a satire of recent history. During the outbreak of COVID, a lot of people behaved strangely and we all collectively were in a somewhat hysterical state of not knowing where we could go or what we could do. But, as Aster takes his shots, let’s also reflect on where we were in 2020.
Millions of people were dying from a virus no one knew how to stop. We were mostly isolated at home, confused, frustrated, and closed off from friends, family, and neighbors. Debates raged over whether kids should remain home or attend school in-person. State and local governments differed on masking requirements. The President tweeted out conspiracy theories and gave press conferences touting pseudo-science and risky home remedies.
We were consuming news and content at a rabid rate and not interacting with people like before. Then the murder of George Floyd happened. The Black Lives Matter movement took hold. President Trump nearly died from COVID before Election Day, when he was voted out of office - results he still to this day has not accepted. Social media exploded. Instagram, TikTok, and what used to be Twitter all became places where people shared and received news. Facebook became a hub for disinformation. Disinformation became mainstream. Our social lives - and the way we saw and viewed the world - changed forever.
With Eddington, Aster sees an opportunity to skewer and satirize who we were just five years ago. But he also believes he has something profound to say about all we experienced. A friend of mine just missed weeks of work due to COVID exposure. Another friend recently retired early from work he loved for decades because of Long COVID.
Respectfully Mr. Aster, on this particular topic, you can kindly take a seat.
Elsewhere, Eddington takes an “all-sides” approach and shows us people on both ends of our political spectrum acting narcissistic or dishonest. A subplot involving the town’s only Black resident (Micheal Ward) being racially profiled for a crime he didn’t commit is disheartening and upsetting, until video of him appearing at a Black Lives Matter rally becomes all the officer needs to arrest him. Who knows whether Aster is suggesting society never actually knows the truth of a situation, or that everyone justifies their delusions with believing whatever they want truth to be.
Honestly, your guess here is as good as mine.
The murder at the center of the film drew audible gasps from the audience, one of the few scenes that actually makes an impact. As a sham investigation ensues, Eddington descends into rioting and chaos. Sheriff Cross’ mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell) has already been established early on as a wild-eyed conspiracy nut, but her videos and stories start to connect with him. We get references to Antifa, we make fun of people hoarding supplies, and have a laugh at everyone who misspell words on their signs. As if all that is not enough, the murder occurred on non-Tribal land but the death was caused by someone acting on Tribal land. So … who has jurisdiction?
And it just goes on and on.
Aster may gather everyone around his microphone, but he has absolutely nothing significant to say. Eddington is like that guy we all know who asks a question, already knows you don’t have the answer, and then smugly answers it to prove how smart he is. Except here, Aster isn’t saying anything with depth or conviction. For all that might be offensive about Eddington - the wild tonal swings and exploitation around survival come to mind, perhaps the most offensive thing about the film is that it is too much of a coward to take a stand on anything.
Much of the humor looks like it could be lifted from someone’s X feed. And in the film’s depraved final act - where Sheriff Cross is hunted by a masked individual after the investigation fully unravels - we are stuck watching a small handful of people randomly running around Eddington, exchanging gunfire in a sequence that feels as if it will never end.
Outside of Ari Aster himself, I have no idea who this is made for. Smug and self-serving, Eddington doesn’t seem to understand the conflicts it speaks about, ignores crucial context for why things happened the way they did, and leaps to generalities far too easily.
Besides … don’t we have podcasts for this sort of thing?
CAST & CREW
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Amélie Hoeferle, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Cameron Mann
Director: Ari Aster
Written by: Ari Aster
Release Date: July 18, 2025
A24