July 21, 2025 · Watch the official trailer
Countless films have been made during and/or about the COVID-19 pandemic, but none are as brazenly bizarre and avant-garde as writer-director Ari Aster’s fourth drama. The head-scratching that audiences will undoubtedly do at every turn is not only meant to challenge their expectations and perceptions of an incredibly pivotal time in modern history but also to set the stage for unquestionably one of the decade’s most befuddling major films.
Though it goes in any number of different directions over the course of two and a half hours, “Eddington” largely centers around a rural New Mexico sheriff and his animosity towards the town's more progressive mayor, with numerous side characters and secondary plot points giving audiences something to return to in subsequent viewings.
Framed almost entirely from Joe’s perspective amid the confusion and paranoia felt worldwide during the early onset of COVID, Aster envelops this small-town thriller/drama with the growing frustration born from seemingly endless isolation and uses several key moments in recent American history to sow the seeds of discontent in its fragile characters.
Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix's familiarity with Aster's unusual directorial style from his work on the 2023 film “Beau Is Afraid” is the perfect centerpiece from which Aster weaves his tale. Phoenix is obviously well at ease leaning into increasingly bizarre or strange situations and able to find both the humor and the drama equally in his performance. The earnestness he displays early on as Joe allows for early audience buy-in and support of his character, helping to maintain viewer attention as things seem to come out of left field at a moment's notice.
Subtle undertones in such a bombastic movie as "Eddington" reflect just how polarizing communication breakdowns can become. The personal and professional conflicts between Joe and Ted are exacerbated by the film's larger worldview and their inability to effectively listen to each other or have empathy only further accentuates the isolationism.
Every character within "Eddington" feels as if they are screaming into the void, longing for someone to hear them, and either getting a poor response or, worse yet, no response at all.
Pedro Pascal is seemingly everywhere in cinema this summer, with "Eddington" being the second of three major summer movies alongside "Materialists" and the upcoming "Fantastic Four" comic book movie. His performance in "Eddington" as Mayor Ted Garcia is only a small microcosm of the talents Pascal can bring to a movie.
Audiences never have the ability to connect or rally behind Ted, not from a lack of desire, but because the overall narrative is seen entirely from Joe's perspective. There's a relative incompleteness or fragmented point of view that leaves major character backstories unanswered.
This is especially true with Oscar winner Emma Stone's supporting turn as Joe's wife, Louise, a moderately eccentric woman with mental health issues of fully unknown origin related to sexual trauma. These issues fester just outside the framework of the film but are the catalysts for many of the film's most inciting incidents.
“Eddington” also benefits from a deep ensemble cast including “Yellowstone” star Luke Grimes as a blindly loyal and dopey deputy, Deirdre O’Connell as Louise’s conspiracy theory obsessed mother and “Elvis” star Austin Butler’s chilling, yet underutilized turn as a burgeoning cult leader.
Aster's decision to compartmentalize big worldly events and ideas within the context of one single small town is an incredible way to tackle such complicated material. While each of the dense political topics Aster takes on within “Eddington” don't land uniformly, there is true nuance in how very common everyday people can be separated emotionally and ethically through unusual circumstances. It's eerie and somewhat frightening just how accurate early scenes in “Eddington” are as they relate to ongoing debates about mask-wearing and personal freedoms during the early portions of the pandemic.
A master of visual iconography, Aster utilizes the absolute most out of his rural southwest landscape. Through striking landscapes and overhead shots, he provides a wide-arcing view of the situation and offsets these with intensely dramatic close-ups that reinforce the delicate nature of Joe's fragile psyche. The genre-bending in “Eddington” occasionally works well as the components of psychological and crime thriller frequently evoke a Coen Brothers film. Though a little fine-tuning from a narrative standpoint would have made for a more complete film, it feels like Aster is trying to make too many points about too broad a subject matter.
"Eddington" stands out as a unique cinematic experience that cinephiles will appreciate for its bold direction and intricate character dynamics from its lead performances. Aster's ability to blend subtlety into bombastic narrative makes for highly compelling cinema, though these very qualities that make "Eddington" unique may also be too polarizing for some viewers as Aster challenges his audience to reevaluate their own worldview.
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