Before Ari Aster made us afraid of attics, flower crowns, or what a mother might do with a piano wire, he was dreaming of spurs, sand, and small-town standoffs. Yes, before Hereditary turned grief into a demonic TED Talk, and before Midsommar ruined daylight for everyone, and certainly before Joaquin Phoenix went mano a mano with a genital kaiju in Beau Is Afraid, Aster had Eddington simmering like chili in a cracked Crock-Pot; spicy, strange, and slightly radioactive.
Now that Aster is officially one of cinema’s certified eccentrics; blessed by Scorsese himself, which is Hollywood’s version of canonization; he has reached that sacred creative echelon where he can pretty much do whatever he damn well pleases. (Beau Is Afraid was three hours long, and he didn’t even flinch. Bold.) So here we are, finally, with Eddington; a sun-baked nightmare that fuses the paranoia of a pandemic with the slow-burn tension of a western, like No Country for Old Men if it were directed by a guy coming off a really bad edible during lockdown.
The setup: It’s 2020. The world is unraveling. Toilet paper is gold, Zoom is church, and everyone’s either screaming about liberty or slathering hand sanitizer on fruit. Enter Joe Cross (played with nervy restraint and barely-contained violence by Joaquin Phoenix), a small-town sheriff in Eddington, New Mexico; a fictional place named after the very real town where Aster spent his awkward teen years, presumably growing long hair and thinking about death.
Joe’s trying to keep the peace as the world around him descends into masked madness. His foil? Mayor Ted Garcia (a delightfully charismatic Pedro Pascal), who’s taken a hardline stance on masks, vaccines, and moral superiority. Somewhere between mask mandates and MAGA meltdowns, the town becomes a pressure cooker, with Cross and Garcia on opposite burners. Things heat up when it’s revealed that Garcia may have once shared more than a handshake with Joe’s emotionally untethered wife Louise (Emma Stone, chewing scenery and maybe a little peyote).
And then; because this is Ari Aster; Austin Butler shows up as a cult leader who speaks in Instagram captions and controls a group of granola anarchists with a mixture of charisma and TikTok dances. Yes, Eddington is a western, but it’s one filtered through Lysol spray and filtered rage. It’s High Noon meets Contagion, by way of a paranoid YouTube rabbit hole.
Aster is at his best here. The film’s tone walks a tightrope over a canyon of absurdity; one minute it’s horrifying, the next it’s darkly funny, and then it sucker-punches you with a line so profound you’ll wonder if your sourdough starter kit was ever really worth it. In one unforgettable scene, a teenage white boy at dinner spirals into a tirade about his own white guilt, only for his dad to shut him down with a line that is both brutally offensive and bizarrely cathartic; “Are you fucking retarded?”. It’s a moment that captures the confusion of 2020 better than any think piece could; half earnest, half insane, wholly American.
Phoenix, who always seems a hair’s breadth from total collapse, is magnificent as Joe Cross. He plays him like a man clinging to reason with bloodied fingernails, torn between protecting his town and losing himself completely to the chaos. He’s not a hero. He’s not even an anti-hero. He’s the American male id, wrapped in a sheriff’s badge and a six-foot rule. He wants to do right. But, as we all learned in those lonely, disinfectant-scented months, wanting to do good doesn’t always end well.
The real brilliance of Eddington lies not in its satire; though it is sharply observed and devastating; but in its tone. Aster is no longer content simply to disturb us. He wants to confuse us, implicate us, make us laugh at something and then immediately feel bad about it. It’s a balancing act that few filmmakers dare to attempt, let alone pull off. The result is a film that is part Dr. Strangelove, part The Great Silence, part South Park on edibles. It is, in a word, a lot.
And it works. Because at the center of all this chaos is Joaquin Phoenix, who turns in what might be the performance of his career (which is saying something, considering he once fell in love with a phone). Phoenix’s Joe Cross is a man wrestling with the ghosts of American masculinity, with the failure of leadership, with the maddening desire to keep everyone safe while watching them set themselves on fire with hand sanitizer. He’s funny, tragic, terrifying. You root for him, then regret it. He’s a sheriff, a friend, a failed husband, and an accidental fascist. In other words: America, 2020.
By the time Eddington reaches its climax; an operatic shootout in the streets of an empty small town that’s half John Ford, half Social Network; you’re exhausted, exhilarated, and maybe a little ashamed of how familiar it all feels. Aster doesn’t just skewer both sides of the political spectrum; he gut-renovates them. He exposes the hypocrisy, the hysteria, the hashtags, and reminds us, in the most brutal way possible, how we all absolutely lost our damn minds.
Visually, the film is stunning. The streets of Eddington are shot like a Sergio Leone dystopia; dusty, empty, and echoing with the sound of distant coughing. Aster finds beauty in abandoned strip malls, menace in supermarket aisles, and poetry in a half-lit Walgreens parking lot. It’s The Good, the Bad, and the Bacterial.
And then there’s the epilogue; a gut-punch of emotional whiplash that has you crying, laughing, and Googling whether Austin Butler actually joined a cult. It’s vintage Aster: tragic, ridiculous, and strangely cathartic.
Eddington is not just a movie. It’s a mirror held up to a time we’ve tried very hard to forget but really shouldn’t. It’s a film about fear; of each other, of the unknown, of the self. But it’s also about absurdity, and love, and rage, and how close we all came to boiling over. A western for the Wi-Fi age. A satire for the age of screaming. And a damn masterpiece, even if it makes you want to move into a cave and never hear the word “immunity” again. This is not just one of Aster’s best films. It’s a cinematic reckoning; a work of art that reflects back to us our most unflattering angles and dares us to laugh. It is messy, brilliant, disturbing, and somehow comforting. A reminder that even at our most irrational and divided, we are still, bafflingly, in this together.
If you’re brave enough to revisit the psychological circus of 2020, Eddington is essential viewing. If you’re not, watch it anyway. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll maybe start hoarding toilet paper again. And for once, that might not be such a bad idea. Highly recommended. Though maybe don’t watch it if you’re still hoarding Clorox wipes.
PURCHASE EDDINGTON IN 4K HERE
Now Eddington is in glorious 4K, courtesy of A24, the studio that could probably release a tax audit in Dolby Vision and cinephiles would still preorder it. The image is, predictably, spectacular. It’s a high-noon modern political thriller soaked in western grit and modern polish. Colors bloom across the wide gamut like an art school sunset, and the black levels are inky enough to hide your shame, or at least your reflection. The film looks wonderfully filmic. It’s never plastic and never digital. As if Ari Aster would ever let pixels near his precious celluloid altar.
The Dolby Atmos mix is equally divine, though it begins with a certain restraint. Much of the film is front-heavy with dialogue, as if the characters themselves are too haunted to let the surround channels in. But when the guns come out, when that modern Western chaos erupts, the sound design blossoms into full-blown bedlam. The bass slaps, bullets ricochet, someone screams (it might be you), and the entire room turns into a surround-sound saloon. Even the party scenes are immersive, height speakers pumping out pop music like a Spotify’s “Desperate Millennials” playlist.
There’s only one bonus feature on the disc, but oh, what a bonus. A 33-minute EPK-style documentary featuring cast and crew interviews, including Aster himself, trying valiantly, poetically, perhaps in vain, to answer the eternal question: “What is Eddington actually about?” Behind-the-scenes clips peek through like ghosts of production days past, and it’s all very A24. It’s artful, self-aware, and slightly uncomfortable in the best way.
Eddington in 4K is, in a word, essential. The video and audio are stellar, the bonus feature is pure gold, and the physical release even comes with collectible postcards, because of course it does. Vote Eddington every year. Preferably with a fountain pen and a whiskey neat.
WRITTEN BY: BRYAN KLUGER
BRYAN KLUGER, A SEASONED VOICE IN THE REALM OF ENTERTAINMENT CRITICISM, HAS CONTRIBUTED TO A WIDE ARRAY OF PUBLICATIONS INCLUDING ARTS+CULTURE MAGAZINE, HIGH DEF DIGEST, BOOMSTICK COMICS, AND HOUSING WIRE MAGAZINE, AMONG OTHERS.
HIS INSIGHTS ARE ALSO CAPTURED THROUGH HIS PODCASTS; MY BLOODY PODCAST AND FEAR AND LOATHING IN CINEMA PODCAST; WHICH LISTENERS CAN ENJOY ACROSS A VARIETY OF PLATFORMS.
IN ADDITION TO HIS WRITTEN WORK, KLUGER BRINGS HIS EXPERTISE TO THE AIRWAVES, HOSTING TWO LIVE RADIO SHOWS EACH WEEK: SOUNDTRAXXX RADIO ON WEDNESDAYS AND THE ENTERTAINMENT ANSWER ON SUNDAYS. HIS MULTIFACETED APPROACH TO MEDIA AND CULTURE OFFERS A UNIQUE, IMMERSIVE PERSPECTIVE FOR THOSE WHO SEEK BOTH DEPTH AND ENTERTAINMENT.
