Eddington
Eddington
A standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in May of 2020 in Eddington, New Mexico.
Alex | Pop Culture Brain reviewedJuly 18, 2025
I hate to say it, but maybe A24 should stop writing Ari Aster blank checks. I saw Eddington, so here's the good and the bad without spoilers. In case you're not aware, Eddington is Ari Aster's new neo western set in a small New Mexico town in the summer of 2020, and it's one of those uniquely frustrating movies because you can see the wasted potential.
Aster puts forth a lot of interesting ideas in this darkly comic, skewed mosaic of America during lockdown. He evokes the tension and paranoia of that time pretty well, albeit with very broad strokes and the actual plot mechanics, up until the third act, are surprising and compelling, even as he relies on archetypes and tropes. There's also that welcome dash of Aster's signature eerie weirdness, which I really appreciated and Joaquin Phoenix is solid. So is Pedro Pascal. Aster also builds a strong sense of place with the New Mexico setting.
But that's where I run out of compliments because this movie is kind of a mess. In the end, Aster can't cohesively land on what he's trying to say. He's just throwing everything at the wall and hoping it amounts to something. There are scenes and sequences where I was absolutely riveted, and then other stretches where I was completely disengaged, put off by the excessive, self-indulgent filmmaking.
And just when you think, okay, he's finally nailed down the big idea behind this movie, he invents some surreal nonsense in the third act that completely undercuts the first two thirds of the film. I still think Aster is a director to watch, but maybe he just needs a good editor.