‘Eddington’ review: Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix face off in Ari Aster’s COVID black comedy

It’s May 2020 and the world has been shut down by COVID-19. The virus hasn’t actually yet made it to Eddington, a fictional New Mexico nowheresville where no one pays the local vagrant (Clifton Collins Jr.) any notice, but the town’s debonair mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is still a stickler for state mandates: no mask, no entry to the grocery store.

Eddington’s sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) isn’t a fan of PPE or Garcia, whom he blames for turning his wife Louise (Emma Stone) into a recluse. So, when Joe realises that other Eddington residents might be tiring of the mayor’s broadly progressive, by-the-book regime, he decides to dethrone him. At an early campaign meeting in a local restaurant – social distancing be damned! – Joe makes an unsubstantiated allegation that could seriously damage Garcia’s nice guy reputation. Does he sound like anyone you know?

You probably weren’t crying out for a satirical black comedy set during the pandemic but if anyone can make the concept pop, it’s big-swing director Ari Aster. He’s already given us two of the most imaginative and gripping horror films in recent memory (2018’s Hereditary and 2019’s Midsommar) as well as a memorably surreal depiction of mental illness with 2023’s Beau Is Afraid, which also starred Phoenix. No one could fault his ambition here: Eddington begins as a relatively straightforward election comedy – a key scene plays out to the aggressively upbeat pop of Katy Perry‘s ‘Firework’ – before getting much weirder.

Over an epic, slightly-too-long runtime of 150 minutes, Eddington morphs into a hyper-violent and wildly unpredictable neo-Western. Along the way, Aster pokes fun at well-meaning white liberals such as Sarah Allen (Amélie Hoeferle) who are all too comfortable co-opting the Black Lives Matter movement. Joe’s willingness to use race for his own political gain rings equally true.

Aster also lampoons toxic influencer culture with a sinister subplot involving Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), a radical cult leader who leverages his childhood trauma to build an online following. His message of transparency and owning your past is catnip to Stone’s character, whose own trauma has been shoved into a Pandora’s Box by her overbearing mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell). In Eddington, even horny teenage bro Brian (Cameron Mann) is savvier than he seems.

Is there too much going on? Possibly, but Eddington is never dull – Aster commits fully to his grisly vision of a ruptured America where a sticky narrative is more important than the truth or any kind of moral high ground. It’s anchored by a typically intense performance from Phoenix, who makes Joe’s descent from placid local servant to frantic megalomaniac compelling even when it tests credibility. Eddington is often an uncomfortable watch, but you won’t want to look away.