Ari Aster’s Eddington is a political powder keg disguised as a dusty New Mexico noir, and it hums with the kind of anxious energy that feels ripped straight out of your group chat after a bad news alert. This is Aster pivoting away from operatic horror toward something more insidious: a civic meltdown played at ground level, where paranoia spreads faster than facts and every moral stance comes with a branding strategy.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Sheriff Joe Cross with a familiar Phoenix volatility, but here it’s sharpened into something explicitly contemporary. Joe isn’t just unstable; he’s radicalized by grievance, ego, and the intoxicating clarity of believing you’re the only sane person left in town. Across from him is Pedro Pascal’s Mayor Ted Garcia, all polished empathy and performative calm, a man who understands optics better than people. Their conflict isn’t good versus evil. It’s order versus narrative, authority versus legitimacy, and neither side comes out clean.
What makes Eddington resonate so sharply right now is how it captures politics as atmosphere rather than argument. Aster isn’t interested in policy. He’s interested in how fear curdles into ideology, how social media turns disagreement into existential threat, and how quickly “protecting the community” becomes an excuse for cruelty. The town itself feels like a pressure cooker, with cinematography that frames empty streets and public spaces as battlegrounds waiting for a spark.
Emma Stone, as Joe’s wife Louise, grounds the film emotionally, embodying the quiet exhaustion of people trapped between competing realities. She’s the human cost of living inside someone else’s certainty.
The shortcomings are real. The pacing can sag in the middle, and Aster occasionally indulges in repetition where suggestion would’ve sufficed. But when Eddington locks in, it’s bracing. This is a movie that doesn’t tell you what to think. It shows you how thinking breaks. And in today’s political climate, that might be the most unsettling mirror of all.
RHFC Rating: 8/10 🍿
