Absurd and Ari Aster go hand in hand. His name has become synonymous with surrealism, where mental unraveling is a given and reality is almost always distorted. In Eddington, his latest descent into madness, Aster tackles a neo-Western, pandemic-era satire starring Joaquin Phoenix as small-town sheriff Joe Cross, and Pedro Pascal as his smarmy rival, Mayor Ted Garcia. What unfolds is part feud, part fever dream.
Set in Eddington, New Mexico, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film doesn’t just revisit 2020; it grabs you by the collar and shoves you back into it. From mask mandates and Zoom meetings to BLM protests and TikTok activism, Eddington throws every headline back at us with ferocity. The film is split in two: the first half focuses on pandemic paranoia, the second unravels into the chaos of George Floyd-era uprisings and racial reckonings.
Aster dares to touch the third rails of modern discourse—Bitcoin, 9/11, internet rabbit holes, celebrity activism, A.I., and somehow threads them together (barely) in a satire that is both bloated and biting. His lampooning of white entitlement and performative allyship is unrelenting and at times laugh-out-loud funny. Phoenix and Pascal play off each other with chaotic brilliance. However, not all performances land. Emma Stone, as Joe’s manic, conspiracy-fueled wife Louise, and Austin Butler, playing a cult leader named Vernon Jefferson Peak, feel like excessive additions. Their star power overshadows rather than enhances.
Michael Ward, the film’s only prominent Black character, plays a police officer, but his characterization is disappointingly shallow. Aster reduces him to a role rather than a person, a symptom of a larger issue. There’s a moment where Joe quips, “Where’d he get all these Black people from? What, he shipping in people now?” and while the line drew a laugh from me, it only underscored the film’s lack of real Black presence beyond commentary.
I’m always cautious when media breaks the fourth wall or leans too hard into real-world trauma. When the spectacle mirrors our lived horrors too closely, the escapism evaporates, and here, Eddington loses me. Aster’s satire may be scathing, but it’s also indulgent, collapsing under the weight of its self-importance.
Ultimately, Eddington wants to be about everything—COVID, racial justice, cults, disinformation, religion, AI, small-town politics, but in trying to say so much, it doesn’t say enough. The runtime drags, the narrative spirals, and by the final act, whatever point the film was trying to make gets buried under its own chaotic noise.
It’s the kind of film that wants to feel profound but ends up feeling like an uncanny historical reenactment with a heavy dose of nihilism.
