Sitting through Eddington felt like revisiting the worst days of 2020 — not just emotionally, but narratively. For a film that’s clearly aiming to capture the chaos, fear, and social upheaval of that moment in history, it ends up feeling more like a confused collection of headlines than a cohesive story.
Directed by Ari Aster, known for unsettling films like Hereditary and Midsommar, Eddington shifts away from horror—but not from horror’s chaos. In its place is a confused political drama disguised as social commentary. Unfortunately, the movie is so disjointed and hard to follow that it ends up being more exhausting than provocative.
The setup has potential: In the fictional small town of Eddington, New Mexico, a tense standoff unfolds between the local sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and the town’s mask-mandate-supporting mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Cross’s refusal to enforce pandemic protocols turns personal when he decides to run for mayor himself. Meanwhile, his wife Louise (Emma Stone) falls into a bizarre online conspiracy rabbit hole, guided by a shadowy figure named Vernon, played with twitchy intensity by Austin Butler.
That all sounds like a solid premise—on paper. But Eddington spirals quickly. Aster throws everything and the kitchen sink into the script: pandemic panic, political divides, racial unrest, radicalization, misinformation, even social media addiction. The problem is he doesn’t weave these threads together; he just tosses them in. The result is not a tapestry, but a tangle.
Watching this movie is like flipping channels during the height of 2020 and trying to make sense of a single, cohesive narrative. Scenes shift with little connection or transition. Characters disappear or become irrelevant. Storylines (like Louise’s) that could carry emotional weight are buried under the avalanche of “look at this too!” moments. It’s a film that constantly feels like it’s starting over without ever building toward anything meaningful.
That’s the most frustrating part: the cast is excellent. Phoenix delivers a grounded, brooding performance; Pascal brings surprising restraint; Stone tries to add dimension to a flat role; and Butler is perfectly cast, if criminally underused. But all that talent is undercut by the directionless script and a lack of narrative clarity. You keep waiting for it all to come together—but it never does.
The cinematography by Darius Khondji is sharp and effective. There are moments—one quiet protest sequence, a sun-drenched grocery store scene—that are visually striking. But great camera work can’t save a film when the story is so messy and thematically hollow.
At 2 hours and 28 minutes, Eddington is an endurance test. It’s confusing, meandering, and frustrating. Whatever point Aster hoped to make is lost in the noise. Instead of delivering insight, Eddington feels like a jumble of half-thoughts, stitched together without a center. For a film about a moment of national fracture, Eddington is a fittingly fractured experience—but not in a way that’s intentional or illuminating. Just exhausting.