When did the world break?

That’s the question on Ari Aster’s mind in his latest film, Eddington. In a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival where the movie premiered, the writer-director said the script was born of his “fear and anxiety” of a country coming apart at the seams. Yes, there is plenty of fear and anxiety inside Aster’s frame, but also a lot of anger. So much anger that it disrupts scenes, sends the dialogue off into tangents, and corrupts the characters. Hell, the anger is so palpable it sends one character into a John Rambo-esque rage complete with machine gun in hand, firing manically into the darkness while screaming in terror. These are not the salad days of America.

Set in the fictitious town of Eddington, New Mexico, Aster’s narrative rehashes the real events of 2020, specifically the period spanning late May to mid-July. The COVID-19 pandemic is in full swing, and cracks begin to form as the initial lockdown and governmental calls for self-isolation drag on with no end in sight. Mask mandates sew deep divisions, conspiracy theories and words like “plandemic” spread like wildfire, and the murder of George Floyd uncorks a dam of dissent. Aster uses this small town as a microcosm of America, but with so little commentary that it feels more like reportage than investigation. The poster’s tagline states, “Hindsight is 2020.” A clever turn on the phrase, sure, but it also underlines what Eddington lacks.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Sheriff Joe Cross, a somewhat bumbling fool who has lost the respect of Eddington, not to mention his wife (Emma Stone) and mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell)—a woman so far down the conspiracy rabbit hole she’s still questions how the towers fell on 9/11. Joe’s lack of respect doesn’t come at the hands of a misdeed, but a failure of assertion. Joe is asthmatic and refuses to wear a mask because he “can’t breathe in it.” That makes him sympathetic to the people who refuse to mask for political reasons. When Joe sees a resident denied entry to a grocery store for not abiding by the mask mandate, Joe sees humanity slipping away and decides to run for mayor and make Eddington great again, so to speak.

But Joe is no Trump, and for all Aster’s fidelity to the 2020 timeline, the president is curiously absent. He shows up in a few social media feeds, more as signpost than signifier. Aster uses actual footage from Fox News and other cable outlets—not to mention the characters spouting on about government conspiracies, cabals, and Antifa—but Trump and his MAGA-hatted followers remain outside the frame. If history has granted Trump an outsized place in the pandemic-era unrest, Eddington suggests we were perfectly capable of getting here on our own.

Joe’s mayoral competition is current mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), a well-to-do career politician who is trying to bring a new data center to Eddington. The center will provide jobs and an economic shot in the arm that the small town needs. On the downside, it’ll drain what little water resources Eddington already has and continue to widen the inequality gap.

Debates over the data center are pushed aside once the protests start, and Aster wrings his hands at privileged white kids demanding racial equality for people they’ve only read about on their social media feeds. Teenager Brian (Cameron Mann) is the key: He gets in the game because he sees the girl he fancies reading a book about Angela Davis. Brian as an empty vessel that identity can be poured in without contradiction. It’s supposed to be funny when Brian says he has no right to protest his own privilege, and “We are on stolen land!” as if he’s the first person in history to make this connection. It’s supposed to be a laugh when Brian confronts his parents at the dinner table about decolonizing whiteness—“You’re white!” his father yells—but Aster’s joke lands best when the narrative grants Brian a 180 and a way to monetize his low-level celebrity.

There are just enough of these moments to keep Eddington humming along, but the movie is a vehicle without an engine. Tension alone drives the story forward, and characters drifting in and out of the frame threaten to take the narrative with them. Austen Butler’s half-baked Svengali, Vernon, enchants Joe’s wife away, and the two vanish when the story needs them most. The lone Black deputy on the force, Michael (Micheal Ward), is falsely accused of murder and incarcerated in a sequence that shows how good Aster can be are creating dread. But then Aster leaves it unresolved and moves on to other characters and other interests. Eddington is a movie so stuffed with ideas and observations that there isn’t enough time to unpack them.

Might this be by design? It’s possible. Cribbing from reality, Aster depicts the background actors as indistinguishable guerrilla documentarians popping out their phones at any indication of a confrontation. They never engage with the conflict, notably in the movie’s denouement—they simply record. If Aster made Eddington closer to the pandemic, I might find more significance in that parallel. But with five years of remove and reflection, it’s frustrating that he doesn’t want to dig deeper.

Especially since he once again has Phoenix in the lead role. Like their previous collaboration, Beau is Afraid, Aster heaps indignity upon indignity on Phoenix as if he’s trying to see how far he can go. Phoenix, who might be one of the most game actors in Hollywood, plays along. If anyone is ready to go deeper into the less savory aspects of humanity, it’s Phoenix.

Instead, Eddington is all reaction. The best it can come up with is that we’ve always been broken and we always will be. The only winners are those who take what they can while they can. And by making this movie, Aster might be in that camp.

Eddington (2025)
Written and directed by Ari Aster
Produced by Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen, Ann Ruark
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward, Emma Stone, Deirdre O’Connell, Cameron Mann, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Amélie Hoeferle, William Belleau, Austin Butler
A24, Rated R, Running time 148 minutes, Premiered May 16, 2025 at the Cannes Film Festival

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