
As a dedicated cinephile, Ari Aster’s debut marked the grisly decapitation of a child, and every movie since has plunged deeper into despair. His latest, Eddington, might also be the most thought-provoking: It transports us back to May 2020, a time that feels like a jump scare when I recall it. We’re smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the era of mask disputes, moral turmoil, and endless doomscrolling. Our protagonist is Joe Cross, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, the sheriff of a New Mexico town, who turns his resistance to mask mandates and a proposed data center into a populist revolt against the mayor, played by Pedro Pascal. As a filmmaker, Aster revels in dancing dangerously close to controversial topics, and the quarantine period offers him an almost overwhelming number of targets: right-wing paranoia, performative activism, and liberal self-righteousness (symbolized here by Katy Perry’s “Firework”). Critics are divided on how successfully he tackles these themes – a division that’s mirrored in one shocking twist late in the film.