With his explosive new work, Eddington, writer-director Ari Aster has a lot to say. A. LOT. TO. SAY. The filmmaker doesn’t suffer fools when examining how the cult-like denial of the 2020 pandemic (and a simultaneous epidemic of racist police murdering people of color) set the country on a course of uninformed blind rage, leading us to dangerously ignorant America of 2025. This is a film that will ignite discussion and debate, but Aster doesn’t use his platform to focus on only one side of the madness that ensued during those early days of COVID-19. 

Eddington is a cinematic nightmare vision of an actual nightmare that split the country. For America, 2020 was a time that amplified the failures of our educational system, as “doomscrolling” and social media rabbit holes led to a frightening intellectual stagnation on a national level. People from both sides of the political spectrum seemed to lose their minds, as many fought against mask mandates, hindering progress that could have stopped COVID in its tracks. Even those who stood with the party of social justice would hijack the powerful Black Lives Matter protests while twisting the meaning of the movement. No social stone is left unturned in Aster’s ambitious screenplay. 

During the beginning stages of the 2020 pandemic, the fictional New Mexico town of Eddington has just begun executing the social distancing rules and nationwide mask mandates. The town’s sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), believes his town is too small for the virus to take hold. At one point, he says of the pandemic, “That’s not a here problem.” Joe goes into stores unmasked and stands up for citizens who do the same; annoyed by those who adhere to the mandates. 

Joe is at odds with the town’s mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is up for reelection. Ted seems to be a good soul, but is not above corruption, as we discover him to be in the pocket of a big tech company that wants to build on Eddington lands. 

The two men have a muddied history that will spill out into their current conflicts. Aster achieves some palpable tension during these early moments while the scenes shared between Phoenix and Pascal become more riveting as the film unfolds. 

Joe’s wife Louise (Emma Stone, in an underwritten role) sits at home, constantly depressed and apparently dealing with certain traumas. Her mother, (Deirdre O’Connell) shares the house and wastes her days mainlining internet conspiracy theories. 

Aster drops the ball in the presentation of Joe and Louise’s marriage. It seems that Joe will do anything to keep his wife in his life, but the screenplay isn’t interested in helping us understand why. It is clear that Louise isn’t happy with anything and wants to leave. Maybe? One night, she tries to come on to her husband but it doesn’t work. The scene is tender but, from that moment on, Louise becomes a caricature who fades in and out of the story. The film fumbles the importance of the character and wastes the talents of Emma Stone.  

Before long, Joe decides to run for mayor in the hope of dethroning Ted. This misguided act is not born of Joe’s desire to work for the greater good of the town, but to find some sort of relevance to his meaningless life. There is some good humor mined from watching Joe drive around the empty streets of his town in his sign-covered car, while pontificating his uninformed anti-mask conspiracies through a speaker. Joe is too unstable a soul to leap into the world of politics without a plan and his irrationality worsens once he does so.

Within this loaded plot, Aster gets solid performances from his cast. Each supporting role finds the right actor while the two leads continue to prove their worth as two of today’s best. 

Phoenix has this type of character down. Joe is a man who is letting his insecurities and mental instability eat his soul. He takes stances, but his conviction is misguided and uninformed. The character is very much representative of a certain someone with an orange tan and a penchant for McDonald’s. Joe‘s fuse is already lit when we meet him. As the film goes on, we are waiting for the explosion. Phoenix is often mesmerizing as we watch this man spiral into a fury of ignorance and misplaced righteousness.  

Pascal underplays his role. It is a smart choice not to turn every minute of his screen time into a showcase. In his most powerful confrontation with Joe, the camera stays behind Pascal as tensions rise to dangerous levels and Ted reacts accordingly, shocking Joe and the audience. A potent directorial choice and a moment well-played by Pascal.

With his fourth feature, Ari Aster has taken on some of the most important subjects of the past decade. The issue being that the filmmaker has overstuffed the picture. For a while, the film is a completely engrossing reminder of how we failed to meet the moment in a time when the country should have come together. The targets may be low hanging fruit, but that is Aster’s point. There is no deep dissection to be had regarding the political and psychological intricacies of the pandemic response. The failure is almost childlike-easy to pinpoint. The disease of cult-mentality (spread by a country already divided by a leader who sought to be a king) was the beast that killed the beauty. In this, Aster gets it right.

The film’s failures lie in the screenplay’s need to throw in everything that went wrong during the pandemic. This isn’t just a screed about how we screwed up the response to the pandemic. The director is issuing a warning against conspiracy theories and the hucksters who seduce people into believing them. Austin Butler has a good (if underwritten) scene as one of these folks. The picture is also about state rights versus the rights of the individual. And there is BLM and those who would pollute its core message. Let’s not forget the reminder that America was built on stolen land represented in the battle for territorial claim between two counties. Then there is mental illness, bigotry, and racism. The latter is unevenly explored in Joe’s two deputies, Guy (Luke Grimes) and Michael (Micheal Ward). Their characters are involved in a subplot that is meant to engage and anger the audience, but ultimately plays as manipulative with a payoff that becomes preposterous as it slides into exploitation.

Worthy issues all, but Aster overstuffs them into too small a canvas. By the time the film moves into its last 45 minutes, the ideas begin to spill out into an unfocused mess, with the final act playing as a desperate attempt to shock. 

Ari Aster is a damn good filmmaker. His two horror pictures, Hereditary and Midsommar are two of the most intense and well-crafted films of their genre. His third film, Beau is Afraid, was something different for the director. The surreal, psychological, dark comedy divided critics and fans. This film will do the same.

It is always a good thing when a filmmaker desires to create something meaningful and original. Ari Aster continues to do so with each film he creates. With Eddington, the director has crafted an intense and pointed look at the deformities of America’s broken social structures. The film works more than it doesn’t and the first hour is strong enough to carry the weight of the faltering second half and the unnecessary finale. 

Eddington is imperfect and uneven, but this is a film that takes bold chances. More filmmakers should be infused with the adventurous mind of Ari Aster. 

 

Eddington

Written & Directed by Ari Aster

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Deirdre O’Connell, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward

R, 148 Minutes, A24, 828 Productions. Access Entertainment