[Satire] Movie Review: Ari Aster Grapples with Recent Past in 'Eddington'
EDDINGTON, NEW MEXICO, JUL 16 – Ari Aster's film explores how misinformation and escalating political and racial conflicts led a New Mexico town to violence during the early months of the 2020 pandemic, critics say.
- The film Eddington, directed by Ari Aster, opened in multiple theaters on July 17, 2025, and depicts a New Mexico town in May 2020 facing COVID and social unrest.
- Tensions rise as Sheriff Joe Cross opposes Mayor Ted Garcia's COVID mask mandates while navigating Black Lives Matter protests and a brewing election conflict.
- The story unfolds with violent murders, a cultish self-help guru's arrival, and escalating divisions aggravated by racially charged disputes and political smear tactics.
- The 2.5-hour film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Cross and Pedro Pascal as Garcia, and includes the line "Evil is sentimental" capturing the bleak human behavior on display.
- Eddington portrays the town fracturing under pandemic-era pressures and political strife, suggesting unresolved societal wounds and the persistence of deep divisions.
20 Articles
20 Articles

Ari Aster made a movie about polarized America. 'Eddington' has been polarizing
Ari Aster's “Eddington,” appropriately enough, has been divisive. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Aster’s film has one of the most polarizing releases of the year. “Eddington” releases in theaters Friday and may be the most…
Eddington Review: The New American Origin Story
Ari Aster’s darkly comic neo-western paranoid political thriller drops us back into early Covid, in small-town New Mexico, to explore the rupture of our collective brains and the breakdown of consensus reality. It’s a blunt and horrific farce that attempts to reckon with our current, unknowable, totally absurd era.
Movie review: Ari Aster grapples with recent past in 'Eddington'
In every one of his films, writer/director Ari Aster has unpacked a trauma, usually his own. In the folk horror film “Midsommar,” it was relationships, while in “Hereditary,” “Beau Is Afraid,” and his short film, “The Strange Thing About the…
On Wednesday 16 July, the film journalists of the "World" deliver their reviews of films to discover in the theater among the releases of the day. Today, in particular, a black look at America in the midst of the pandemic of Covid-19.
'Eddington' Review: Politics, Paranoia, and Pedro Pascal
Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in ‘Eddington’ (Photo Credit: A24) When it comes to writer/director Ari Aster, the only thing that it seems movie fans can expect is to expect the unexpected. From Hereditary through Midsommar right up to Beau is Afraid, it’s hard to tell what the auteur is going to do. And that trend continues with his newest movie, Eddington. Set in May of the year 2020 in the town of Eddington, New Mexico, Eddington finds the …
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