In Eddington, Ari Aster’s latest doom spiral, the proposed building of a data center in nowhere New Mexico provides the catalyst for a long-overdue psychological breakdown. The man in question is Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), whose perceived list of ills includes a worryingly online mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell), a disinterested, catatonic wife (Emma Stone), a woke mayor (Pedro Pascal) with plans to build a state of the art data centre, and the familiar inconveniences of COVID-19. Should even reading that word cause discomfort, it’s nothing if not intended: since rewiring the horror genre with A24, Aster has been repositioning himself as cinema’s patron saint of debilitating anxiety. Hereditary is probably best-remembered for its brutal decapitation but, all these years later, one suspects the scariest thing for Aster was whether or not his protagonist, an artist with an imminent exhibition and a nervy benefactor, will make her deadline.  

Eddington is nothing if not ambitious, a period piece for an era that is still just four iPhones ago, and one that prods issues most wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot poll. Richard Nixon was only two years resigned when All the President’s Men was released, but the majority of Americans had by then agreed it was probably the correct course of action. Set in the heady summer of 2020, events that the world is far from coming to terms with, Eddington is picking at an open wound. This makes the director’s choice to focus his film on Cross––an anti-masker who decides to run against the popular Garcia for mayor––a provocative one, if also misjudged. The character’s thinly sketched beliefs combined with Phoenix’s uncharacteristically vague performance keep him constantly at arm’s reach. We never really get into his head, which makes his eventual downfall (or Falling Down) feel both nihilistic and dramatically undercharged. (That pretty much the only characters who act in good faith are a Black cop, Michael [Michael Ward], and the members of the neighboring Pueblo community, perhaps says something about the limits of Aster’s satirical nous.)

The film reaches a dramatic peak, perhaps its finest moment, during a BLM protest where a local white girl, Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), screams at Michael, whom she briefly dated, simultaneously chastising him for not getting involved and, however disingenuously, calling herself a hypocrite while joining in a call for him to take the knee. Aster is probably wise to release the pressure valve here, but the film never quite decides on what it’s trying to say in such moments, leaving one with little more than a sense of futility and disillusionment. Sarah’s actions are shown as self-righteous, just as the two other group leaders’––a local boy (Cameron Mann) and Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka), mayor Garcia’s son––are shown as performative.

Both young men, of course, have other motives and seem willing to do anything in their power to not be cucked by one another. This mood is echoed in Cross’ marriage to Louise, who we learn had some kind of relationship with mayor Garcia back in the day and whose mother will bring her into the concerning orbit of a touring conspiracy theorist called Vernon Jefferson (Austin Butler, weaponizing his good looks in a brief but memorable role). It’s curious how many times Stone has played a variety of wantaway lover in the last few years––most recently in The Curse, another story of tech evangelists and racial tensions in small-town New Mexico, albeit one that took a scalpel to the kind of things that Aster approaches with a hunting knife.

Whatever the case, I’m still thankful that a filmmaker as adventurous as Aster was given two opportunities to make a film like this; most would give their right arm to make even one. For its faults, Eddington is never short on ideas and nothing shot by the great Darius Khondji will ever be a chore to watch: the way he captures the town from above, in particular, aptly gives the film’s world the feeling of a petri dish. Besides Radu Jude, no director I know of has got closer to the dizzying sensation of the doom scroll as Aster did in Beau Is Afraid‘s opening minutes. Even outside its recurring motif of phone screens and contemporaneous memes, Eddington attempts to capture something similar, but its execution feels elongated, only coming together in fits and spurts. Aster largely keeps his powder dry until a finale that’s about as outré as it is caustically sour. I couldn’t wait for it to be over and I can’t wait to see it again.

Eddington premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and opens on July 18.