Ari Aster, the director behind some of the best A24 movies like Midsommar and Hereditary, is back with a new film on the 2025 movie calendar. Eddington, which hits theaters on July 18, is a step away from horror, as Aster tackles the neo-Western genre. People had a lot of thoughts about Beau Is Afraid, Aster’s last film, and it sounds like Eddington is equally divisive.
Eddington reunites Ari Aster with Beau Is Afraid star Joaquin Phoenix, who plays small-town sheriff Joe Cross in this tense 2020-era dark comedy. Pedro Pascal co-stars as Mayor Ted Garcia, and they’ll be joined in the upcoming A24 movie by Emma Stone, Austin Butler and Luke Grimes. David Ehrlich of IndieWire gives it an A-, praising the director for his exploration of the pandemic as the moment that forever tore a hole in the fabric of American society. He says:
Aster has described Eddington as a Western with cell phones instead of guns, but the guns do eventually come out; no one familiar with the director’s previous work will be shocked to learn that this movie doesn’t end with a raucous but rousing civil assembly. The more that Aster’s latest freakout begins to resemble an apocalyptic kumbaya about the need for non-partisan communication, the more gleefully he obliterates any hope of restoring a shared reality between his characters.
Lindsey Bahr of the Associated Press gives the movie 2 stars out of 4, writing that no side is spared as the town spirals into chaos and gruesome violence over mask mandates, conspiracy theories and TikTok trends. Revisiting 2020 again so soon in such a way just might break your brain, Bahr says, writing:
The problem with an anarchic satire like Eddington is that any criticism could easily be dismissed with a ‘that’s the point’ counterargument. … Eddington is not incompetently done or unwatchable (the cast and the director kind of guarantee that); it just doesn’t feel a whole of anything other than a cinematic expression of broken brains. Five years after we just went through (at least a lot of) this, Eddington somehow seems both too late and too soon, especially when it offers so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness.
Aaron Neuwirth of We Live Entertainment says Ari Aster’s Eddington is sure to trigger certain emotions in the audience, but is also quite funny, playing up comedic tension to balance the more violent portions of the movie. Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal are excellent, Neuwirth says, continuing:
Yes, Eddington is packed to the gills and will no doubt be divisive, but I had a marvelous time with it. The movie does a lot, to a point, and grapples with things not everyone will be dying to see dealt with, but it also feels uncompromised, big, and sparkling with choices made by a director willing to move all over to get results fitting for his sensibilities, elevated or otherwise.
Travis Hopsin of Punch Drunk Critics says the fear surrounding the pandemic, Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests that’s depicted in Eddington is “designed to enrage us,” but the most terrifying part of Ari Aster’s film is how accurate it is. The critic says:
Aster’s terrifyingly skillful depiction of our crumbling society is what drives Eddington at its best. Along with another strong, sympathetic, darkly comic performance by Phoenix, the film works best as a cruel reminder of a time we’d all like to forget. It falters and stumbles once Aster gives in to the violence we all know is coming, but by then Eddington has done what it was set out to do, which is to scare us and piss us off in equal measure.
Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting gives Eddington 2 out of 5 skulls, however, calling it “empty provocation.” Ari Aster gets too ambitious, the critic says, trying to recapture every point of contention from 2020, which makes the movie increasingly convoluted over time. It’s well-directed, and Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is “riveting,” but overall, Navarro finds it lacking:
As if it’s not evident, Aster is juggling a lot of different ideas, tones, and themes with his fourth feature. That there’s so much ground to cover leaves little room for interrogation, and Aster doesn’t seem interested in offering commentary beyond pointing out just how deranged it all is. Of course, there’s the question of whether any of this needed to be pointed out, especially as the film careens toward a rather cynical conclusion hinting toward our present.
It sounds like Ari Aster is dealing with some pretty heavy material from a time we remember all too well and that we haven’t exactly gotten past as a society. If you want to go on this ride with Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and the rest, Eddington will be available to catch on the big screen starting Friday, July 17.
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