Ari Aster’s Eddington: A Pandemic Western Where Reality Splinters Like Glass

The Fractured Mind of America, Framed Like a Nightmare Western

Ari Aster will never lose his knack of using a scalpel to cut into the American psyche, and with Eddington, he has brought a scalpel to the American psyche that has never been as blunt. The first-look featurette of his next movie, which is set in the dusty New Mexico town in May 2020, does not just imply something chaotic, the featurette teases an all-out insanity as people lose it.

Joaquin Phoenix is the sheriff and Pedro Pascal is the mayor, and their feud sparks a torch of paranoia in a town that was already on the splines of the pandemic. The script, which, according to the cast, is sharp and unsettling, by Aster positions COVID-19 less as a set and more as the trigger to an existential break. It is not Contagion; rather it is The Crucible by using badge politics and desert dust.

Cannes' Mixed Reception: Love It or Hate It, But You Can't Ignore It

Released in 2025 in the 2025 Cannes Main Competition, Eddington divided the critics right in the middle (65% on Rotten Tomatoes). Others described it as a “messy provocation”; other termed it as a “spectacular implosion of decency.” No prizes, but few of Aster films get along with juries. It will really be tested July 18, when A24 spews it out at audiences in the U.S. One thing is obvious: Aster does not believe in nuances. The featurette in turn whets the appetite with a contemporary western one in which neighbor is turned traitor, a trustless world, and the sheriff, gaunt and intense-Phoeinx, and he loses it. It is a purely family-based horror on a larger scale on an entire town, the doomed subject being America.

Why This Might Be Aster's Most Polarizing Work Yet

Aster's films thrive in discomfort, but Eddington leans into something uglier: the raw, unfiltered fracture of 2020. The pandemic broke more than bodies—it shattered shared reality. Aster weaponizes that.

The cast's reverence for the script suggests a tightrope walk between satire and horror. Emma Stone and Austin Butler lurk in supporting roles, but the spotlight stays on Phoenix and Pascal, two actors who specialize in quiet menace. If Beau Is Afraid was Aster's absurdist epic, Eddington feels like his No Country for Old Men—bleak, relentless, and mercilessly topical.

Final Thought: Who's Ready to Get Uncomfortable?

Aster doesn't make movies for escapists. Eddington will likely be a Rorschach test: either a piercing indictment of America's pandemic meltdown or an exhausting barrage of cynicism. Either way, it's coming. Saddle up.