Images courtesy of A24 Films
EDDINGTON— 4 STARS
Eddington may take place in a fictional New Mexico desert hamlet of 2,435 people, but the film is drenched in temerity of every sort of viscosity and potency. Mortality, ethics, hospitality, and even blood itself run thick and thin at numerous points in this venomous satire, which dares to set its lurid affairs during the peak of the COVID-19 panic five years ago. The man spraying and slathering the ironic ick is none other than Hereditary’s Ari Aster, a quickly rising master storyteller in making audiences feel exposed and uncomfortable with what is sure to be one of the most polarizing films of 2025.
The neo-western film is set in May 2020 in the aforementioned cow town in the Land of Enchantment, where the podunk community is on the heels of getting a financial boost from the construction of a high-tech data center. The facility is backed by wealthy corporate investors who loom over the village’s dealings, trying to carry local favor and secure village approval to build. The man they need most in their pocket is Eddington mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, who is everywhere in 2025), who is currently running unopposed for re-election.
Eddington’s trail toil begins with a derelict and barefoot homeless man coming down from that data center site, frothing and wailing wicked omens, and causing a public disturbance outside of Ted’s bar establishment. Hearing his words, one man’s senseless rant-and-raver is another person’s town cryer warning his neighbors of potential danger. Be that as it may, the commotion requires the attention of town sheriff, Joe Cross, played by Joaquin Phoenix, top-lining his second consecutive Aster film after 2023’s tragic existentialist dramedy Beau is Afraid. The lawman—a tightly-wound anti-masker—mishandles the situation, which gets streamed on social media, and introduces pre-existing beef between the oafish Cross and dutiful Garcia.
Ted and Joe’s animosity continues the next day during a customer confrontation with grocery store managers over the federal and state-wide mask mandate. The peaceful and cosmopolitan Ted quells the situation, one-upping the non-compliant and uncouth Joe again in front of his fellow citizens. As it turns out, Ted Garcia was rumored to have had an indecent relationship with Joe’s cold fish wife, Louise (two-time Academy Award winner Emma Stone), years ago when they were in high school. Rumors have been long forgotten, but it remains a traumatic skeleton in the closet that Louise—and now Joe—have not shaken. Peeved to no end, Joe gets it in his mind to run against Ted for the office of Eddington mayor, kicking off a contentious and bumbling competition of mud-slinging and airing dirty laundry.
LESSON #1: HOW WAS YOUR TRIP THROUGH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC?—But, this is the time of COVID, where nothing was as simple as a cut check, a handshake or two, or a simple town election. The extremely intentional period choice of Ari Aster means to sow, disclose, and reflect on the time’s rampant feelings of dissension and misinformation, all of which were made worse with the Black Lives Matter aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, which makes its way into Eddington’s tinderbox. Nevertheless, one’s personal experience or core beliefs, cardinal or casual, when it comes to the pandemic and BLM will color their impression and acceptance of the film. Likely split by certain geographic, social, and even religious delineations, Eddington will be a non-starter of a film experience for many. Alas, plenty of mistakes were made that the collective public deserves to have its nose rubbed in by an immodest movie like this. It was a hell of a time to be alive.
The caustic synthesis of character motivations is the crux of absorbing Eddington. Emma Stone makes her presence felt as the home-ridden manic depressive spouse. Louise is fed with heaps of conspiracy-laden media by her muttering mother, Dawn (Tony Award winner Deirdre O’Connell), and creates surrealistic woven art which covers her family’s home. Combining her much-debated “history” with Ted, she embodies a puzzling figure. That said, it’s the roster of men in Eddington who are assigned the truly malignant traits that sculpt the movie’s blunt and bitter derision.
LESSON #2: WHAT IS WITH THIS GUY?!— Top to bottom, this lesson’s question could be asked with all available WTF tone, and the accompanying examinations and answers wouldn’t budge the bewildering totality of Eddington or the explosive powder it packs in its keg. Starting with the homeless man, carefully listen to Ted’s hangups as a mayor, the rebelliousness of his son Eric (newcomer Matt Gomez Hidaka of TV’s Silo), and Eric’s supposed friend Brian (Cameron Mann from Mare of Easttown) competing for the same romantic affection and Instagram acclaim. Keenly watch the overqualified, yet perfectly cast Austin Butler galavanting into town as the internet cult leader, Vernon Jefferson Peak, who sweet-talks Louise and Dawn. Be wary of Joe’s deputies Guy Toolery and Michael Cooke (Yellowstone’s Luke Grimes and Empire of Light standout Micheal Ward)—one white and one black—duped into helping their boss’s campaign while overwhelmed with the racially-charged protests against law enforcement. Don’t forget about those watchful silent investors lurking around Eddington, too.
To a man, each of them reeks with a different odor of male fragility, a very worthy flaw for Aster to target and engorge on with this twisted parable shot with sulking camera work by auteur cinematographer specialist Darius Khondji (Bardo, False Chronicle of Handful of Truths). The greatest perpetrator of this brittle frailty in Eddington is Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe Cross. The Joker Oscar winner has taken the crown from Jack Nicholson as the best crazy man in the movie business. He’s a shocking trainwreck of a man you can’t take your eyes off of in Eddington.
Look no further than Cross’s floundering campaign, led by the wimpy slogan of “Lets free each others hearts.” Lovelorn at home and brazen on the job, a microcosm of his utter inadequacy could be summed up by one tone-deaf poster of many strapped to his county-issued squad SUV transformed into his personalized rolling campaign megaphone. It reads, “Your being manipulated,” complete with the same signature all-caps Impact font and cluelessly uncorrected spelling and grammatical mistakes as the slogan. Joe Cross represents that loud-and-clear type of misaligned justice we haven’t entirely corrected in five years.
LESSON #3: SPECULATION IS NOT THE GROUNDS FOR ESCALATION— Through the exaggerated events of Eddington led by Joe’s tailspin, Ari Aster makes his stances quite bracing and uses the movie’s star-laiden stump to address the many varieties of toxic Kool-Aid. From the farcical flavors coming from the “I did my own research” crowd to the serious-minded juice spewing out of incensed progressives, little to no quarter is given to anyone. More often than not, blame and massive mistakes from knee-jerk reactions come from careless, gossipy conjecture inflated by social media grandstanding. Speculation is not the grounds for escalation. Jealousy, gross misinformation, and weaponized shame are the dangerous by-products from those erroneous actions.
Everything carrying tension in Eddington, cranked by a tart score from the electronica duo of The Haxan Cloak Bobby Krlic (Blue Beetle) and Daniel Pemberton (Materialists, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), snaps once a pulled trigger enters the narrative. After shots are fired for the first time, the movie jumps a shiver of sharks. At that turning point, the novelness of the satire molds and a manhunt, where we’re in on the dramatic irony, takes over. The preposterous worst of people and actions emerge and threatens to undercut the message movie ambition of Ari Aster and his quality compilation of intermingled buzz points, especially when a lengthy coda of weary comeuppance tries to hammer them home one last time. You may, like the surviving characters, be left asking how did we get here and is it all worth it.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1322)