Eddington review: this town’s gonna blow

The human mind is a fragile thing, but if we survive the trials sent to break us, it’s designed to forget, to compartmentalise and rebuild as resiliently as we can. But sometimes, the things we’ve locked away come back to haunt us.

That’s something American filmmaker Ari Aster explored, via the deep wounds of familial trauma, in an unholy trinity of confronting horror movies: Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019) and Beau is Afraid (2023).

It’s exceedingly rare that almost all of humanity faces the same brain-rewiring tribulation at once. Two world wars did it, as did a series of pandemics, including the largely denial-brushed away catastrophe of 2020’s COVID-19 outbreak, a globally unifying/disunifying event where shit got real fake news fast.

It’s easy to forget the very real fear that we were all going to die, watching countless bodies buried in mass graves. That governments prioritised the young over the old, who perished in unfathomable numbers in aged care facilities or home alone. That so many had to say goodbye to loved ones on iPads while politicians partied and smackdown fights erupted in supermarkets over toilet paper. All while white supremacy-fuelled conspiracies sparked wild comments online, tearing communities asunder.

A handful of films have wrangled with this reality-warping event. Like prolific Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s absurd morality play, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), Brazilian director Fábio Leal’s lockdown horny Follow the Protocol (2022) and Theda Hammel’s Manhattan-set comedy Stress Positions (2024).

But Aster nails the chaotic spiral of this epoch-melting occurrence with Eddington.

Eddington: this town ain’t big enough

Screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival before opening nationally on 21 August, Eddington is set in the fictional New Mexico town of the same name during the early, Trump-wrecked days of that spectacularly unravelling clusterfuck.

Rejoining Aster after the epic mommy’s boy mayhem of Beau, Joaquin Phoenix plays Sheriff Joe Cross. At first glance, he might seem like a reasonably nice guy. He’s besotted with his wife, Louise (Emma Stone). But she struggles with her own experience of familial trauma, only hinted at, and was mostly a shut-in, crafting creepy dolls that don’t sell, before the Governor mandated lockdowns.

While Joe’s a decent enough boss to deputies Michael (Micheal Ward) and roid-addled Guy (Luke Grimes), there’s something not quite right about him from the off. A curdling milquetoast, Joe’s wheedlingly wounded masculinity is as dangerous as any huffing brute, especially when armed with a gun. That, and he’s virulently opposed to wearing a mask despite the mandate he’s charged with upholding.

Watch the Eddington trailer.

His refusal, on that front, sees him lock horns with outwardly left-leaning Mayor, Ted Garcia, played by the so ubiquitous his casting may be union-mandated, Pedro Pascal. He, too, seems stand-up, but has a semi-fractious relationship with his wayward son, Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka), and is also standing for re-election on the back of building an enormous, environment-chewing, job-stealing AI data centre to ‘save’ a town that’s already struggling with unemployment and drought. Oh, and he’s a smarmy git.

When Aster leads them to a ‘shootout’ after Joe flagrantly unmasks in the socially distanced supermarket, the ten-paces battle is comically underplayed as a cross-street shouting match, iPhones recording, of course. They’ll face off again at the ballot box, with Joe unilaterally deciding to run against Ted, much to Louise’s annoyance.

Eddington: chaos awakens

Eddington isn’t simply about the folly of chest-beating men, though that’s an undeniably big factor in our broken world. Aster more keenly discerns that the clashing concentric circles of society’s collapse are slumping into a Venn diagram of doom.

Louise is fed up with her husband mercenarily using her trauma to one-up Ted with very online theories that have child abuse rings run by failed presidential candidates from a pizza shop basement (don’t Google it). Unfortunately, in seeking solace, she falls for the snake oil charms of Austin Butler’s too-smooth cult leader, Vernon.

A rabbit hole dive encouraged by Louise’s easily swayed mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), who’s been crashing with them during lockdown. Prone to obsessive internet surfing, she’s twisted by the fact that front-footed US health agencies ran pandemic readiness dry runs two years earlier. Still, at least she sniffs the rat in Vernon that her smitten daughter can’t.

Further complicating matters, Eric and his very white bestie Brian (Cameron Mann) mutually swoon over the also-not-Black Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), who nevertheless takes it upon herself to rally the local Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd.

Recruiting predominantly white middle-class teenagers, hers is an eyebrow-raising leadership, opening the path for many of the film’s hilarious lines, mostly involving Brian. At one excruciating meeting, he says it’s time for white people to shut up and listen, just as soon as he’s finished his speech.

Then there’s Sarah, cracking it at actually Black copper Michael, her ex-situationship, for not getting involved. Why would he when there’s apparently so much to be said on his behalf? Michael’s about as close to a good guy as we get on this side of the county line. Though he is a cop, loves his guns, and there is the not-so-small matter of how young Sarah was when he slid into her DMs…

Bad actors will sacrifice Michael as the plot spirals exponentially into a not-good time for the town. Throw into the mix the chaos agent that is perma-drunken and sunburned homeless dude Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr), a constant irritant to Joe until he’s happy to use him against Ted, and the scene’s set for Eddington’s impending conflagration.

All the while, the far more level-headed neighbouring sheriff, First Nations man Jiminez Butterfly (William Belleau), watches agog as the definitely-a-bit-racist Joe tries to hold the line against his jurisdiction.

Eddington: apocalypse when?

Eddington is a lot in the very best way. Truth be told, I’m a little surprised by just how many US critics railed against it out of Cannes. Perhaps it’s a little too close to the bone, as that rotten empire teeters out of democracy?

Yes, it also takes aim at the left’s worst holier-than-thou excesses and tendency to eat itself, with hardly anyone escaping unscathed. Some have weirdly rounded on film’s refuses to take a firm political stance, as if that was the sole purpose of cinema, a la bizarre rally against Alex Garland’s similarly themed Civil War.

Aster takes a big-picture view of how the pandemic utterly fractured the already fragile glass connecting a society built on unapologetic genocide that Jiminez and his men must live with daily.

If an overt visual nod to Apocalypse Now – possibly the most overused cinematic nod – announces the final-act arrival of an entirely unnecessary invasion force, given the town’s already rigged to blow, it’s a minor niggle.

As is the surprising underuse of Stone and Butler, and, to a point, Pascal. But for all the jostling parts, this is very much a portrait of Joe’s Dante-like descent. Phoenix delivers a masterclass in one man’s jittery, caffeine-fuelled madness, matched by Daniel Pemberton and Bobby Krlic’s startling score and the unforgiving lens of cinematographer Darius Khondji, capturing the blazing heat of this fully cookt [sic] town.

In so doing, Aster exhumes Western bones and sets them alight through our warped contemporary lens, cracks and all. There’s no simplistic understanding of good guys versus bad on soil long spilled with the blood of the innocent and not so much. Eddington is perfectly, devastatingly funny, the mad, bad and sad scary movie for our apocalyptic times.  

Eddington is showing at the Melbourne International Film Festival before going on Australian general release on 21 August 2025.

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