YNOT at the Movies

Strap in: "Eddington" (USA 2025 | 148 min.) is a wild, unhinged ride that skewers societal absurdities with fearless, razor-sharp wit. Writer-director Ari Aster's latest is a sprawling, darkly funny, and deeply unsettling state-of-the-nation epic that reimagines the Western as a cracked mirror held up to American dysfunction.

Set in the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the story centers on small-town sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), who finds himself in open conflict with the town's progressive mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), over plans to build a massive data center. But what begins as a local power struggle soon ignites wider tensions. With lockdowns in effect, tempers flaring, and national protests simmering across screens and streets, the town is swept into a wave of unrest. As social divisions harden and conspiracies bloom, the citizens of Eddington fall into factions, feuds, and free fall, until the chaos erupts in an absurd, shocking climax that feels both inevitable and utterly deranged.

Director Ari Aster populates the town with a volatile mix of characters: restless teenagers trying on activism like a new identity, deputies entangled in personal and political rivalries, a tribal sheriff watching warily from the margins, and a raving outcast who becomes an accidental oracle. The result is not just a narrative of collapse, but a chaotic mosaic of fear, self-righteousness, and the desperate need to be heard.

Filmed on location in southern New Mexico, the film is visually arresting. Darius Khondji's cinematography captures the stark beauty of the Southwest while transforming the town into a surreal stage for American unraveling. The physical spaces—overstuffed homes, decaying storefronts, impromptu protest sites—feel both intimately real and eerily symbolic.

Though there are moments of absurdity and sharp comedy, Aster never loses sight of what's at stake. The film refuses to flatten its characters into simple stereotypes; instead, it digs into how isolation, economic anxiety, and online feedback loops turn ordinary people into extremists, or casualties. As protests swell and misinformation seeps into family living rooms, "Eddington" lays bare the fragmentation of shared reality in a country more connected and more divided than ever.

This is Ari Aster's most expansive and most urgent film to date. "Eddington" doesn't tie things up neatly, it lets the chaos speak.

"Eddington" opens in theaters on Friday, July 18, 2025.