I didn't think a trailer could give me pandemic PTSD—until now.
Ari Aster's Eddington trailer just dropped, and it's like watching No Country for Old Men through a COVID-era fever hallucination. The setup? It's June 2, 2020. The virus is boiling tensions in a small New Mexico town. And suddenly, there's a full-blown standoff between a sheriff and a mayor. Guns, grief, and gallows humor included.
This isn't just another pandemic story. It's Aster weaponizing the western to dissect America's cultural civil war—with a black comedy scalpel.
Aster Isn't Subtle. He's Surgical.
If you thought Beau is Afraid was chaotic, Eddington looks like its cracked cousin who drank bleach and found religion in Facebook comment threads. The trailer leans hard into claustrophobia and absurdism: hazmat suits under cowboy hats, hand sanitizer squirted before gunfights, and town hall meetings that feel like Dr. Strangelove reboots.
Let's be clear—this is not your typical pandemic movie. There's no noble doctor racing for a cure. No feel-good montages of people clapping from balconies. This is rage. Confusion. And the slow psychological unspooling of a town that thinks Tiger King was a government psyop.
COVID Cinema: The Genre No One Wanted—Until Now?
Here's the twist: While Hollywood has largely sidestepped the pandemic in favor of “timeless” stories (read: safe bets), Aster dives headfirst into the messy now. And that now is a pressure cooker of misinformation, moral panic, and political nihilism.
Historically, filmmakers waited years to process major trauma. Vietnam didn't get Apocalypse Now until four years after the war ended. Post-9/11 films trickled in slow—United 93, The Hurt Locker—as audiences tiptoed around raw nerves.
But Eddington is different. It's not a memorial—it's a provocation. And its timing feels almost reckless. Or brave.
Cannes Is About to Lose Its Mind
Eddington premieres at Cannes next month, and honestly? I'm betting on walkouts and standing ovations. Aster doesn't aim to please—he aims to provoke. And in a world where even mask etiquette sparks screaming matches, a film that plunges into the ideological quicksand of 2020 is practically guaranteed to start fires.
It's a bold play by A24 (again), and it may prove that the only way to confront America's pandemic wounds is to satirize them until they bleed honesty.
Would you watch a movie that dares to laugh at the darkest year of your life?
Or does the trailer already cross a line?
👇 Sound off in the comments below.
