Film Review: 'Eddington' Is A Well-Directed Film That Takes On Too Much
Ari Aster is a director of horror films. This includes Eddington. And no, Eddington is a not a supernatural flick a la Hereditary nor a folk horror magnum opus in the vein of The Wicker Man like 2019’s sprawling Midsommar. Eddington is a horror film about America, reflecting on things that really have happened to us as a society, and what that looks like played out in front of a fictionalized story based on real events. The term “horror” in Aster’s definition seems to fit many different conventions.
Eddington is well crafted and directed, but it feels way too soon to be broaching any of these topics with a fresh set of eyes. There are moments in the back half of the film that feel absurdist and messing with the reality of things that did happen in the real world - perhaps that was the point, noting how conspiracy theories seep their way into our minds and make it so that we don’t know what is or isn’t real. But it’s a frustrating watch at times, not because of the acting, the directing, or the writing, but because it feels way too close to home in an America that has forever been altered by our country’s (and world’s) woeful unpreparedness for a pandemic.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, a New Mexico sheriff in the small town of Eddington. It is late May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have been implemented. Joe is frustrated with mask mandates. After a buildup of events that culminates in a confrontation with the local mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), and a man being denied entry into a grocery store for not wearing his mask, Cross makes a Facebook video post that he is running for Mayor of Eddington against Garcia. It is a spur-of-the-moment decision that enrages his wife Louise (Emma Stone) and conspiracy theory-laden mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell). Simultaneously, Louise is going further down the rabbit hole of conspiracy, falling for the musings of Vernon Jefferson Peak, an evangelical cult leader raging online against the “Deep State” - echoes of QAnon are found here.
The film tries desperately to present a centrist perspective, showing how both sides of the argument have positives and negatives, but it comes off as uneven and clustered. There is far too much here that is trying to be tackled, ranging from not just COVID-19, but the George Floyd protests, police brutality, racism in America, white privilege, gun violence, and land ownership…I could go on. Eddington makes it clear that it’s not supposed to be a comfortable film to watch. I’m fine with that. What hinders it is the constant jumping back and forth between topics of contention before we even have a second to breathe and marinate on the issue.
Eddington is presented a bit like social media - a tool used by every character to a radical degree in this film. People claim that it is a necessity to use social media to communicate. Here, it is a tool of distraction, amplification, and radicalization for everyone. On that level, Eddington gets the point across, but it’s not necessarily something that makes for a good film. However, Aster’s films are not necessarily films, but art pieces with many layers to them that allow for further dissection.
I watched this movie and often thought of Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee’s 1989 film that successfully pulled off this feat. It managed to tackle many topics while eventually reaching a conclusion that brought all of these schools of thought together, while remaining steadfast in its main point. While Eddington uses the aforementioned social media methodology purposefully, its second half - a violent bloodbath that takes place across the town in varying degrees - skewers all of this, turning it into a character-driven piece similar to 1970s antihero films that doesn’t quite work.
This is a film that will be unpacked in decades to come. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fairly write about it, given that we’re still barely five years out of a pandemic that changed our lives in every possible way. I would be interested to rewatch it in another ten or twenty years and see how it holds up. Maybe it is a time capsule. Maybe the messaging is there, but undecipherable given the proximity to the events that transpired in 2020 and 2021. While the messaging in Eddington is unclear, one thing is clear: we were not prepared for how COVID-19 changed our world sociologically, technologically, or psychologically. But now, we have to live with it. We have no choice.
Release Date: July 18th, 2025
Rated: R (for strong violence, some grisly images, language, and graphic nudity)
Running Time: 2 hours, 28 minutes
Directed by: Ari Aster
Screenplay by: Ari Aster
Produced by: Lars Knudsen, Ari Aster, Ann Ruark
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, Emma Stone
