ARI ASTER'S EDDINGTON: A COVID WESTERN OF PANDEMIC PARANOIA

Eddington, New Mexico. That’s the setting of Ari Aster’s latest artistic endeavour,  a fever dream of a western that acts as a social commentary on a society in full-blown frenzy.

Set at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film tackles a subject that still feels a little taboo, probably because everyone went a bit mad during that period. We’ve seen COVID pop up in documentaries or as background noise in TV shows, but rarely integrated into fiction with such precision and accuracy. Aster doesn’t take sides or portray the pandemic as some biblical evil falling from the sky. Instead, he breaks it down into lived experience: the paranoia, the mass hysteria, the quiet insanity that infected nearly everyone.

Mass hysteria and mass conformity dominate here. Aster’s brilliance is in his detachment: he doesn’t single out a villain or a hero. Everyone is insane. Everyone is flawed, and I didn’t think there was a single likeable character in this movie. I wasn’t rooting for anyone and I just went through a restless, anxiety-inducing journey that when I left, I was so baffled, I couldn’t pinpoint how I felt about it.

But let’s backpedal. At its core, this is a showdown between Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and corrupt mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Cross announces his run for mayor live on Facebook (it’s Gen X, after all), and from there the movie spirals. Aster overloads us intentionally. There are countless storylines, each reflecting a different social or cultural perspective, yet somehow cohesive in their collective madness.

Take Emma Stone, for instance. She plays Cross’s wife, whose obsession with creepy dolls seems to keep her mental illness at bay. Which, to be fair, makes sense given her conspiracy-theorist mother has just moved in with them at the start of the pandemic. Eventually, she’s lured into a cult led by none other than Austin Butler, and the two literally ride off into the sunset together. Talk about a fever-dream moment.

Butler, magnetic as ever, deserved more screen time, though it’s hard to blame Aster for the juggling act with the fantastic cast he assembled. Luke Grimes (Yellowstone) and Michael Ward (Top Boy), play the sheriff’s department sidekicks. Both make an impression despite their limited appearances.

For many viewers, these events may still feel too fresh to watch with clear eyes. But Aster captures the delirium of those years perfectly: everyone turning on each other, everyone convinced of their own superiority, the internet acting as a messiah ready to validate the most irrational belief . Social media isn’t just a backdrop , it’s a character. It’s the lens through which every outrage, every paranoia, is amplified. Eddington’s small-town setting acts as a magnifying glass over America: hypocrisy, lunacy, moral posturing on all sides. This is a wild-west 1984, where politicians are two-faced liars and Twitter is the new source of truth. Everyone in this town is an entitled, self-righteous preacher, attacking each other for the same sins they’re committing.

Up until the third act, the film feels like a portrait of societal fracture. Cross refusing to wear a mask and being treated like a plague carrier becomes a microcosm of larger divisions. Aster weaves in systemic injustice referencing the death of George Floyd, which in itself was an inciting moment for the Black Lives Matter movement and the wave of viral outrage that followed, pointing out how people suddenly “discover” political consciousness only because a camera phone exists to document it. I genuinely wanted to throw my popcorn bucket at the screen watching the “white boy, possible future school shooter” archetype,  the one who develops a “woke” personality and parrots Wikipedia entries just to impress a white girl who’s her own archetype of privilege.

Towards the end the movie tips into a David Lynch fever dream. I have a theory that Cross’s coughing signals he’s contracted COVID, a clever, if unsettling, way to root the paranoia in sickness hallucinations he might be experiencing. That’s all I’ll say to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, but trust me, there are so many easter eggs hidden throughout. Take the data centre being built at the start of the film. If you want to get conspiratorial, you could read it as commentary on how we were too busy attacking each other to notice the rise of massive, environmentally destructive data centres, or the larger economic and political games quietly unfolding in the background.

This movie might be worth a rewatch and a deeper analysis because this is Aster at his most overwhelming: a hall of mirrors reflecting the ugliest parts of ourselves. It’s bold, messy, and deeply uncomfortable, and that’s exactly the point.

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