‘Eddington’ Review: No Country for Men, Women or Children [B+] Cannes
You know that feeling, even in 2025, when you hear someone cough in any environment how it triggers a kneejerk response? It’s impossible to not whip your head around and think ‘Do they have it? ‘When was my last vaccination?’ like a teen in a horror film who hears a sound in the basement. That nervous feeling has yet to subside, that unease. 2020 was a milestone year in humanity as COVID-19 seized the world’s, killing hundreds of thousands and very quickly began to deteriorate the fabric of human interaction that the internet had been chipping away at for years. This is where director Ari Aster (Beau is Afraid, Hereditary, Midsommar) finds the setting for his newest film, a small town in New Mexico on the verge of a world war with itself over mask mandates, conspiracy theories and an election. Call it anti-nostalgia.
The small town of Eddington has 2,435 people with a complicated border situation as part of the town shares geography with Pueblo, a Native American sovereign region. Police officers there are constantly in conflict with Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), an anti-masker who claims that his Sevilla County has jurisdiction over everything. Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) being the perfect example as his home literally resides on the border, front half in Sevilla, second half in Pueblo. It’s one of the many clever and nuanced ways that Aster tackles the social and political issues that the United States found itself in early 2020 after a post-Trump presidency, a deadly pandemic and a new Joe Biden presidency that was questioned for validity for his entire term. Middle grounds all but disappeared in the worlds of Republican and Democrat, turning every disagreement into feudal war and town like Eddington were ground zero.
For the most part, Cross’s busiest days are filled with minor noise complaints and annoyances from “the homeless,” a single homeless guy named Lodge (played by Clifton Collins, Jr.) and taking care of his homely wife Lou (Emma Stone), who makes weird, ugly dolls that Joe himself buys through surrogates to keep her from her downward spiral. They’ve also taken in Lou’s mother Dawn (The Penguin’s Deirdre O’Connell), a full blown conspiracy loon who screams ‘do your own research!’ while reposting the craziest boomer posts on Facebook. Her husband was also the former sheriff of Sevilla County, and she never misses a chance to let Joe know that, and that he’ll never measure up to him. Aster’s mother issues remain singular and strong and O’Connell is fantastic here. For housebound Lou, she quickly goes from criticizing her mother’s rants to diving headfirst into them when she sees a video of self-help guru Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler, woefully underused in a single scene). His two deputies Michael (Micheal Ward) and Guy (Luke Grimes) are equivalent to a patsy and an oaf are loyal, definitely to a fault.
Unlike Alex Garland did last year with his divisive Civil War in which he largely refused to ‘take sides’ on his political warfare thriller, Aster shrewdly manipulates our allegiances, or who we think we align with, by giving ‘good’ people nefarious qualities; Pascal’s Gavin Newsom-esque mayor is a pro-tech supporter angling for a massive data center to be built just outside of town even though it will deplete Eddington’s water resources and more, and making ‘bad’ ones accessible. Sarah, a well-meaning teen white girl savior (Amélie Hoeferle) who does TikTok dances to James Baldwin quotes and leads BLM protests makes for an easy mark for liberal ridicule but her genuine commitment begins to transcend the mockery. She definitely made a black square on her Instagram and is who Bo Burnham sang about in “White Woman’s Instagram” and her activism inspires friends Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) and Brian (Cameron Mann) to parrot her speechifying in an effort to curry favor for her affections. But it also results in arguably the best line in the film: “I’m here to shut up and listen and that’s what I’m going to do as soon as I finish this speech,” maybe the most accurate depiction of white liberalism this decade.
The film’s score, by the Haxan Cloak and Daniel Pemberton, effortlessly dabbles in Aaron Copland-esque Americana with rich, ripe horns full of sweeping purple mountain majesties and cinematographer Darius Khondji, working wiith Aster for the first time, gorgeously lenses the southwest like a Coen Brothers style western.
While it may seem like Aster is trying to hedge his bets by not limiting his characters to one-sided simpletons, the one side he’s on is his sadistic torture of his new abuse muse Joaquin Phoenix. Shot, stabbed, mercilessly ridiculed and hunted down, Aster puts the actor through even more trials than the giant attic penis in Beau is Afraid here and Phoenix is more than game, he dives in head first. He’s a classic man wrongly accused and on the run except he’s guilty of everything he’s done. Unrepentingly savage and making emotionally stupid choices that dig his own grave deeper by the minute, Cross is constantly feeling the flames of karma licking at his shit kicker boots and he can’t run fast enough. Phoenix is deeply in the zone here as he accerlates with his foot on the pedal of one bad decision after another.
Aster is bound to make a lot of people mad with Eddington and plenty will feel that five years isn’t enough time to properly analyze the communication breakdown that COVID and the 2020 election but he’s an instigator. By the film’s final act, which largely transforms into a Heat-style shootout with graphic gunshot wounds, people being blown apart by IEDs and direct allusions to Kyle Rittenhouse, you’re a bit unsure of the director’s intent but the titilation of provocation is firmly entrenched and while it’s not likely going to change anyone’s beliefs of that very specific time in our history, it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to either. Like most of us, he’s still struggling with how and where it all fell apart, how we ‘got to where we are. For all the horror of Aster’s previous films, the director pulls back the veil to reveal the true horror isn’t anything supernatural or otherworldly, it’s us, it’s always been us.
Grade: B+
This review is from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival where Eddington premiered In Competition. A24 will release the film theatrically in the U.S. on July 18.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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