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With: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O'Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, Amélie Hoeferle, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Cameron Mann, Landall Goolsby, Elise Falanga, Robert Mark Wallace
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Written by: Ari Aster
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Directed by: Ari Aster
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MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, some grisly images, language, and graphic nudity
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Running Time: 148
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Date: 07/18/2025
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Lockdown & Load
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Filmmaker Ari Aster returns with his fourth feature film, Eddington, a non-horror, real-world story of COVID, paranoia, conspiracy theories, and nightmares; it doesn't click in any satisfying way, but it's still darkly mesmerizing.
It's 2020 and the COVID lockdown is on in Eddington, New Mexico. Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), who suffers from asthma, avoids wearing a mask. When a fellow citizen with similar respiratory problems enters a store unmasked, Joe defends his rights. Meanwhile, Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is a stickler for following the rules. Joe gets the idea to run against him on a platform of freedom of choice.
At home, Joe's wife Louise (Emma Stone) suffers from depression and spends her time making bizarre sculptures. Louise's mother, Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell), who lives with the couple, is a conspiracy theorist, believing everything she finds online. Dawn takes her daughter to hear Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler) — essentially a cult leader — speak, and Louise becomes increasingly drawn to him.
Meanwhile, as Joe's life begins to fall apart, chaos reigns: the Black Lives Matter marches have begun, and a mysterious terrorist group is on the move.
Eddington comes as close as any movie to capturing the fevered, surreal atmosphere surrounding that time. But it also leans heavily into the negative: the arguing, the bickering, fear, misinformation, conspiracies, and people with an inflated sense of victimization. Joaquin Phoenix's Joe Cross navigates this jagged landscape much as his Beau navigated the surreal nightmare of Aster's Beau Is Afraid, the actor giving his all to the role. (He's unafraid to look foolish or weak.)
Aster cranks up the noise and the tension so that we feel a deep sense of unease for the entire 2 hours and 28 minutes. Bad stuff happens at left turns, and most of it feels plausible, at least until the final stretch, which becomes a phantasmagoria of gore and violence.
In the end, it appears as if Aster is trying to balance all viewpoints by calling them all ridiculous, which seems neither useful nor interesting. It's like an essay that goes on too long and has no end. But Aster is a filmmaker of considerable talent, and even a lesser movie of his — such as Eddington — is still filled with dazzling flourishes and moments of visceral impact.
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