Eddington: Ari Aster’s Covid movie punches in all directions and misses
Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone’s comic talents are lost to one-dimensional roles in a misguided pandemic satire filled with dated jokes and disingenuous political messaging.
- Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
How do you deal with the chaotic drama of our times? According to Ari Aster’s new film, Eddington, by adding yet more chaos. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Joe Cross, the sheriff of the New Mexican town of Eddington. He’s an ordinary Joe, Joe the plumber-style ordinary, salt of the earth type. It’s the time of Covid and Joe’s got asthma and doesn’t like wearing his mask, nor does he like the mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who once briefly dated Joe’s wife Louise, (Emma Stone), a woman with a history of mental health issues compounded by the presence by her mother (Deidre O’Connell) a conspiracy theorist, trapped with them as a result of the lockdown.
Joe decides to run for mayor to compete with his arch-rival on an anti-mask, Covid-sceptic, MAGA-ish platform (Trump is never mentioned for some reason). There is A LOT of plot. A homeless man wanders through the film coughing and dribbling and yelling, and Ted is attempting to push through a massive data center construction which might have environmentally damaging results. Austin Butler shows up as a cult leader, proffering his own conspiracist version of politics which centers on widespread pedophilia and attracting the attentions of Louise. The local youth begin to organise Black Lives Matters protests even though the only Black character with lines in town is the Sheriff’s deputy (Micheal Ward). The protest is inspired as much by hormones – the two young men lust after a female Social Justice Warrior – as it is by the killing of Black men by the police.
Soon matters are getting out of hand, existing fault lines widen – an indigenous tribe has jurisdiction just outside of town and harbour a mutual dislike of Joe – and new ones appear as riots break out and murders are committed. An unwholesome element arrives via private jet, hoping to spread yet more mayhem, culminating in a video game body count and an action sequence that seems more designed to mitigate for a growing sense of pointless tedium as the film passes the two-hour mark.
The problem with Eddington is not its cynicism – Network (1976) is cynical and is brilliant – the problem is its aggressively self-confident incoherence. It’s the obnoxious uncle at the dinner table concluding that they’re all as bad as each other. Liberals are compromised and dishonest; the right are rabid and irrational. Meanwhile recent political events – specifically the second election of Trump – have not so much overtaken the film as lapped it several times over and made this kind of both-sideary look disingenuous if not simply wrong.
Reportedly, Aster wrote the script for Eddington several years before making Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) and retooled it for a pandemic setting. This explains the scattershot approach of its satire, as it peppers the film with jokes about everything from Amazon delivery vans to second amendment rights, 9/11 truthers to TikTok. Along with its misanthropy – everyone is venal and stupid – it shows no self-awareness about how dumb it often is. It isn’t punching down: it’s punching every which way, flailing at straw men targets and low hanging fruit – self-hating white liberals and racist policemen alike.
What is truly infuriating is seeing actors of huge talent serving the director’s skewed vision. Phoenix imbues Joe with a down-to-earth soulfulness, someone who yearns not to be living through the times he’s living through. Pascal and Stone’s comic talents are for the most part wasted in one-dimensional roles – Stone’s feels like a particularly offensive take on both mental health and child abuse, played as just another thing her husband must deal with. In fact, this is a very white male film. As compromised as our protagonist may become, he’s the best of a bad bunch who somehow – largely because of Phoenix’s charisma – retains our sympathy.
That said, there are some laugh-out-loud moments. With this much craziness, the film will no doubt find its champions – I predict a Southland Tales (2006) trajectory. Another plus is the camerawork by Bong Joon-ho’s regular collaborator Darius Khondji, which creates beautiful American desertscapes that are almost Martian in their otherworldliness. But in a moment when the need for sharp satire and incisive political cinema is more urgent than ever, this just feels like a bloated, indulgent mess.