EDDINGTON
(director/writer: Ari Aster; cinematographer: Dharius Knondji; editor: Lucien Johnston; music: The Haxan Cloak, Daniel Pemberton; cast: Emma Stone (Louise Cross), Joaquin Phoenix (Joe Cross), Deidre O’Connell (Dawn), Michael Ward (Michael), Pedro Pascal (Ted Garcia), Amèlie Hoeferle (Sarah), Clifton Collins Jr. (Lodge), William Belleau (Officer Jiminez Butterfly), Austin Butler (Vernon), Cameran Mann (Brian), Matt Gomez Hidaka (Eric), Landall Goolsby (Will), King Orba (Warren), Dan Davidson (Brian’s Father), David Midthunder (Santa Lupe Pueblo Sheriff); Runtime: 148; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Ann Ruark, Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen; A24; 2025)
“The performances by Phoenix and Pascal were good.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Ari Aster (“Beau is Afraid”/”Midsommar”) is director-writer of this Coen Brothers type of off-beat comedy and gore fest. The visually stunning film is a baffling message-orientated, neo-Western thriller, and black comedy. It’s set in the fictional dusty suburban small town of Eddington, New Mexico in May 2020 and into 2021, during Covid-19. It tunes into the paranoia and isolation that gripped the country during the pandemic. It’s pictured as a time of misinformation, anger, and confusion sweeping across the American landscape that resulted in the country becoming screwed-up over its restrictive policies that allegedly did more harm than good. It tells how our leaders let us down by their lack of responsible leadership and how bitterly divisive the country became.
The mean-spirited and boisterous anti-government Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), a free-wheeling libertarian figure, is running for mayor against the spineless liberal figure, the incumbent, who is a calculating and image motivated bureaucrat named Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal)–a congenial Gavin Newsome type, who owns a bar in town and was the ex-boyfriend of the sheriff’s wife.
Joe openly opposes wearing a mask (he has asthma and believes each person should be free to choose if he wants to wear a mask or not, which is opposed to the mayor’s rigid position). Joe hates everything about the mayor, and the haughty mayor in turn despises him as not being his intelligent equal.
The nasty campaign bothers Joe’s depressed, mentally ill, homebody wife, Louise (Emma Stone), whose hobby is making strange dolls and selling them online. The political conflict puts a further damper on their childless marriage. Her annoying conspiracy theory believing and social media user widowed mom, Dawn (Deidre O’Connell), also lives with them in their modest home.
The gist of the film is about the political rivals matching wits against each other as they campaign for office. There are subplots over a tech AI data company named SolidGoldMagikarp and its move to Eddington to improve the town’s economy even if opposed by the locals its supported by the mayor (he knows better than they do).
There are clashes in town over the national headline story of a white cop killing the black George Floyd in Minneapolis while he was under arrest. The deputies (Luke Grimes) and (Micheal Ward), the white and black officers, clash over their opposing beliefs on Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement. Brian (Cameron Mann), the mayor’s best friend’s son, who becomes “radicalized” by the leftist movement because of his crush on the ‘bleeding heart’ liberal, the social justice activist Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), who’s concerned about her white privilege. Meanwhile Ted’s teen son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka), from his divorced wife, refuses to be in a bubble and rebels. We also see Louise and Dawn drawn into the life of the mentally ill Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), a charismatic and heavily tattooed homeless loner living in the hills, who listens to live-stream wellness gospels that offer controversial misinformation and awful conspiracy theories that he communicates with his loyal followers over his Internet program. Because of his stand against child abuse, the ladies join his cult.
The result is an outrageous and cynical political film that seems to be going everywhere and nowhere. Ultimately the film bogs down with too much mayhem, not enough tension, a lack of clarity, and an unfulfilling climax.
The performances by Phoenix and Pascal were good, but its subplots were messy and its political message was puzzling. It’s main point is the system doesn’t work and that corporations control everything in today’s America. In other words, the filmmaker believes the country has become extremist because it has become infected by a deadly man-made virus.
It played at the Cannes Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 8/11/2025 GRADE: B-
dennisschwartzreviews.com