Eddington

I graciously welcome the return of Ari Aster, a filmmaker I’ve consistently shown up for since Strange Things About the Johnsons shook the internet. I was there on opening night for all three of his previous films. Hereditary was a breakthrough: chilling, masterful, and proof that Aster was someone to watch. Then came Midsommar, which somehow raised the stakes with its unnerving daytime horror, intricate ensemble work, and deeper thematic resonance. And even Beau Is Afraid, as messy and divisive as it was, delivered a knockout performance from Joaquin Phoenix and has one of the most daring, electric first acts I’ve ever seen.

Now we arrive at Eddington, Aster’s most grounded and yet most chaotic film to date. A movie that doesn’t gently allude to 2020 but fully confronts it. It revisits everything we’d rather forget: the uncertainty, the masks, the isolation, the performative politics, the social unraveling. Instead of tiptoeing around the trauma of that year, it dives headfirst into the chaos.

I have to admire Ari Aster for the sheer nerve to make a movie set in 2020 that emboldens itself in how awful living in that era truly was. It may have been hard to watch at points, but the contents were always rooted in the truth. Yes, Eddington is sure to rub people the wrong way, but that is why it is one of a kind. Aster is not afraid to piss people off, make something messy, and reflect the worst of us back at ourselves.

Eddington is neither a personal drama nor a traditional pandemic film about one person quietly enduring isolation but a full-blown fever dream. It is a surreal collage of every negative thread from that year, pulled and twisted into something absurd, overwhelming, and painfully recognizable. Eddington has already elicited critiques saying that “it’s too soon” and that “we don’t need a movie about 2020.” But we all lived through that year. Some of us are still recovering emotionally, mentally, and socially! Ignoring it won’t help us grow. Eddington challenges us to look back and actually sit with the mess. The screenplay acknowledges all of the confusion of the time: the hysteria funneled by the media, the fear of being locked away from your peers, and all the ways we publicly and privately tried to cope with the fallout. 

At its heart, Eddington is not about COVID-19 at all. It’s about a man, Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross, trying to fix his marriage in the middle of this chaos and digging his own grave with every lunatic decision he makes. Phoenix plays him with manic precision. He is a man who believes the world is out to get him while also casting himself as the town’s savior, yet his true nemesis is his own faulty decision-making. Phoenix once again proves that he is a force of nature. He has mastered the art of portraying idiotic, impulsive maniacs, which he hones to a T in Eddington. If Phoenix and Aster keep teaming up, I can’t wait to see what kind of madness they get up to next time around. 

There is also something uniquely terrifying about how Eddington portrays social behavior slipping into absurdity during this time period. Social norms blur, logic evaporates, and everything devolves into chaos. Aster’s camera lingers on background details, posters, extras, strange glances, which are each loaded with specificity. It is as if you are seeing society dissolve in your periphery, and you are unsure when exactly things started to break.

One of the most important and uncomfortable ideas the film tackles is how people in 2020 used movements and messages not out of belief, but out of self-interest. Eddington promotes neither left-wing nor right-wing ideologies, and instead examines the type of people who have no real ideology: those who latch onto causes, political labels, or trending narratives just to further their own agenda. Aster holds a mirror to that kind of behavior. The fact that it stings and resonates as much as it does proves he has succeeded.

Pedro Pascal’s character, Mayor Ted Garcia, perfectly captures this hypocrisy. He is polished, progressive, and always says the “right” thing when the cameras are on. But in private? He finds it all stupid. He is dismissive, hollow, performative, a contradiction that feels deeply familiar. I have seen it in people I know, from colleagues to friends to even family. These are the kinds of people who got loud not to help, but to be seen. That part of 2020 lingers and rarely gets acknowledged, until now.

The film also highlights the attention-seeking side of protests, how people sometimes hijack movements that are not theirs and get so caught up into the performative nature of it all. They demand to be the loudest voice in the room and center the cause on their own agenda instead of who and what it is actually for. It is a difficult truth to acknowledge, but Aster does not flinch one bit from showing it.

Though Eddington’s social commentary shines, its utilization of its talented cast leaves much to be desired. Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler) flirts with being the film’s most genuine figure—or perhaps its biggest con artist—as he speaks about “deep web” conspiracy theories, but he is too underutilized for the messaging about this character to sink in. Something similar can be said about Emma Stone’s Louise. There is so much potential in her story and her connection with Joe, her mom, and eventually Vernon, and what we do see is intriguing. However, she is held back by limited screen time. These are two of the few missed opportunities in an otherwise jam-packed movie.

Still, Eddington may be Aster’s most hilarious film to date. Now with a few years removed, we can freely laugh along at the way the film satirizes key moments of 2020. In hindsight, some of those slogans, protests, social media trends, and influencer performances were so absurd and idiotic. Ultimately, Eddington is about how society began to crumble in 2020 and how this decay has continued even today. The pandemic was not just a health crisis; it was an ignition point. We have spent the last five years dealing with the fallout. This film reflects that collapse not with neat lessons or satisfying arcs, but with contradiction, exhaustion, and chaos. It will be controversial. It will upset people. But that’s the point. Eddington is a mess, but so was 2020, and I admire the hell out of it for that.

7/10