Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal star in Eddington.The Associated Press
Eddington
Written and directed by Ari Aster
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone
Classification 14A; 149 minutes
Opens in theatres July 18
Critic’s Pick
As far as anyone knows, filmmaker Ari Aster was nowhere near Wuhan, China, in December of 2019. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic and its many attendant crises of the body, soul and spirit seem so queasily and perfectly aligned with the director’s pitch-black sensibilities that even if the novel coronavirus did not exist, Aster might have eventually invented it himself.
That is the laboratory-of-the-mind leak suggested, at least, by Eddington, Aster’s new epic of absurdity that takes direct aim at the pandemic and its early, debilitating effect on the American psyche. And just like those dark days of 2020 and 2021, the result is a magnificently off-the-rails poison pill of a film, one that skitters from paranoiac thriller to reactionary satire to something far more caustic and unnerving. It is the cinematic equivalent of long COVID – lingering, haunting, and demanding rigorous, skeptical investigation.
How Eddington’s Ari Aster made Hollywood’s first, and perhaps last, pandemic-era satire
Aster’s focus is on the small (and fictional) New Mexico town of the title, a dusty patch of land whose metaphorical importance to the pandemic era is announced right off the bat by introducing audiences to the area’s resident vagrant, a half-naked mentally ill man who mutters obscenities to anyone who will listen. In short order, the drunkard proves himself to be the most relatively stable guy in town, with the local populace quickly falling into vortexes of their own making following state-ordered social distancing, masking and quarantines.
Trying to keep the peace is Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), a largely by-the-book family man who spends his off-hours caring for his emotionally distraught wife, Louise (Emma Stone), who is suffering from some unmentioned crisis that occurred long before COVID came to town.
Rather timid and gentle for a lawman but seemingly imbued with a just sense of right and wrong, Sheriff Joe is highly skeptical of any pandemic-prevention measures. This puts him in direct conflict with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), whose smarmy progressive veneer has irked Cross for ages.
As Cross builds support from his deputies (Michael Ward, Luke Grimes) and Garcia builds his own coalition of true believers, the stage is set for a standoff not unfamiliar to fans of any number of good ol’ fashioned Westerns.
Yet just when it seems as if Aster has made his most conventional film yet following the triangle of sadness that is Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid, the director flips Eddington on its head.
What began as a prickly satire of pandemic-era politics turns into a vicious exploration of what happens when a society tears itself apart. Shocking moments of violence lead to genuinely upsetting narrative and thematic pivots, so much so that pro-vaxxers and anti-maskers will sometimes find themselves briefly aligned, if only for a moment.
That Aster sees the United States as an incurably toxic land – a place that was infected long before 2020, and forever immune to any kind of existential inoculation – should not be surprising to anyone who has witnessed his earlier cinematic nightmares. But in many ways, Eddington represents an impressive leap in ambition and execution for the filmmaker, who is now within spitting distance of becoming the king of American alienation.
There are countless moments nestled inside the shell of Eddington that deserve to be studied with a kind of Talmudic fervour. The deeply romantic rantings of a QAnon-peddling conspiracy nut played by Austin Butler are just as poignantly provocative as a series of political-protest sequences that cast cynicism on both sides of the blue/red state divide.
Aster also proves himself to be the most skilled craftsman of his time when it comes to delivering moments of genuine, eye-popping shock. This is a movie that doesn’t just bleed, but gushes.
He has a scarily tight grip on his cast, too, his highest-wattage ensemble yet. After pushing Phoenix to the limits with Beau Is Afraid, Aster gives the actor a chewy new challenge here with Sheriff Joe, whose persona curdles before our eyes.
Pascal, seemingly obligated by law to appear in every other movie released in 2025, is sharp as always, especially during a scene that pits Mayor Garcia and Sheriff Joe in a face-off to the tune of Katy Perry’s Firework. (The pop song was previously immortalized in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s 2014 comedy The Interview but gets an even more disturbing backdrop here.)
Yet it is Stone who leaves the most seismic impression. Despite barely 20 minutes of screen time, the actress delivers a shattering performance as a woman on the verge of becoming a ghost.
Aster isn’t exactly coy with his intentions for the character – nicknamed “Rabbit,” Louise is steadily falling into internet rabbit holes – but Stone adds deep shades of pain and hope. (The actress did have a slight leg up with the character, however, having previously starred in the Showtime series The Curse, in which she played another traumatized wife stuck in a New Mexico town with an emasculated husband.)
Like Aster’s previous film Beau, Eddington ends on a moment explicitly designed to infuriate. But that’s just America circa 2020. Or rather, 2025. Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease.
