Eddington (2025): Movie Review and Film Summary

Eddington (2025)

Introduction: Ari Aster's Powder Keg in the Desert

Ari Aster's Eddington (2025) is a neo-Western fever dream that detonates like a Molotov cocktail hurled into America's culture wars. Directed and written by the master of familial unraveling (Hereditary, Midsommar), this A24 production transplants his signature blend of dread, delusion, and dark humor to the sun-baked badlands of New Mexico. Starring Joaquin Phoenix as the twitchy Sheriff Goodie and Pedro Pascal as the slick Mayor Jackson, the film clocks in at 129 minutes with an R rating for pervasive profanity, drug use, and psychological mayhem. Premiering at Cannes on May 18, 2025, and expanding wide on July 18 via A24, Eddington arrives amid Aster's hot streak, with a $35 million budget already recouped through festival buzz and early streaming deals.

Set in the titular dusty town during the early COVID-19 lockdown of May 2020, Eddington pits neighbor against neighbor in a standoff sparked by a sheriff-mayor feud that escalates into full-blown societal implosion. With a cast including Emma Stone as the enigmatic diner waitress Iris, Austin Butler as the volatile rancher Bobby, and supporting fire from Micheal Ward, Luke Grimes, and Deirdre O'Connell, the film is a powder keg of provocation. Early reviews are polarized: Vulture dubs it "Aster's most audacious satire yet," while The Guardian warns of its "shallow both-sides-ism." But does it explode with insight, or fizzle into farce? This review and summary sift through the ashes, revealing a film that's as uncomfortable as it is compulsively watchable.

Plot Summary: Lockdown in the Lawless Land

Spoiler Warning: Major plot details ahead.

The film cracks open in Eddington, New Mexico—a forgotten speck on the map where pickup trucks rust under endless blue skies and the local diner serves as town hall. It's May 2020: COVID whispers are turning to roars, but here, masks are for outlaws, not pandemics. Sheriff Goodie (Phoenix), a paranoid pill-popper with a badge and a Bible, enforces a draconian lockdown, barricading the town like it's the Alamo. His nemesis: Mayor Jackson (Pascal), a charming opportunist peddling "freedom rallies" and black-market hydroxychloroquine, rallying the anti-vaxxers with megaphone sermons on sovereignty.

Act One simmers with small-town surrealism. Goodie, haunted by his wife's desertion and a hallucinatory coyote that nags like a Greek chorus, raids Jackson's compound—a ramshackle ranch turned QAnon-lite HQ. The spark: a botched arrest of Bobby (Butler), a meth-fueled rancher whose "patriot patrol" shoots first, asks TikTok later. Enter Iris (Stone), the diner's sharp-tongued oracle, slinging coffee and cryptic wisdom while hiding her own secrets—a past affair with Jackson that birthed a son now caught in the crossfire.

As tensions boil, the standoff ignites. Goodie declares martial law, herding "infected" outsiders into a makeshift quarantine tent that reeks of internment camps. Jackson counters with a midnight convoy of ATVs and AR-15s, broadcasting live from a hilltop cross. Subplots fester like open wounds: Micheal Ward's Tariq, a Black mechanic torn between Goodie's "law and order" and Jackson's "liberty or death"; Luke Grimes' Deputy Hale, a closeted moderate whose coming-out sparks a brutal hate crime; Deirdre O'Connell's Widow Pruitt, a doomsday prepper whose bunker hides the town's meth lab.

Act Two spirals into psychedelic pandemonium. Hallucinations blur reality: Goodie sees his face melting like Dali clocks during a peyote-fueled stakeout, while Jackson's rallies devolve into orgiastic raves with fireworks and fentanyl-laced punch. Iris mediates, her diner a neutral zone where confessions flow like bad chili—revealing Jackson's graft funded by Chinese knockoffs, Goodie's badge bought with family favors. A powder keg moment: a federal agent (O'Connell in dual role) arrives, only to be "canceled" in a viral video gone wrong, pitting red vs. blue in a shootout that leaves half the town in flames.

The climax erupts at Eddington's annual chili cook-off, now a battlefield under a blood moon. Goodie and Jackson face off in a desert duel—fists, philosophies, and a stolen bazooka—while Tariq and Iris broker a fragile truce. Twists cascade: Bobby's the real puppet master, laundering cartel cash through the mayor's "freedom fund"; Hale's suicide note exposes the sheriff's corruption. In a hallucinatory haze, Goodie mercy-kills Jackson (or does he?), only for Iris to reveal she's the FBI plant, her "son" a decoy. The town implodes—riots, revelations, a coyote howling apocalypse—ending in eerie silence: Eddington burns, survivors scatter like ash.

At 129 minutes, the plot is a taut trip—Aster's nonlinear flashbacks (TikTok scrolls, fever dreams) keep the dread dialed up without losing the thread.

Performances: A Powder Keg Ensemble

Joaquin Phoenix detonates as Goodie—a jittery mess of meth-fueled machismo and mommy issues, his Oscar-bait tics (twitching jaw, sweat-slick monologues) both hilarious and heartbreaking. Pedro Pascal slithers through Jackson with oily charisma, a Trumpian showman whose charm curdles into menace. Emma Stone anchors the madness as Iris—wry, weary, her diner drawl dripping subtext like hot sauce. Austin Butler's Bobby is a breakout brute, all coiled rage and cowboy cool. Ward's Tariq provides poignant center, Grimes' Hale aches with quiet tragedy, and O'Connell chews scenery as the dual agents. The ensemble crackles—every line a lit fuse.

Direction and Craft: Aster's Desert Mirage

Aster directs like a shaman on shrooms: cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski (Midsommar) bathes New Mexico in feverish golds and bruised purples, long takes tracking standoffs like serpents uncoiling. The score by The Haxan Cloak throbs with industrial hums and twangy guitars, evoking No Country for Old Men on acid. Editing by Lucian Johnston fractures time—social media scrolls interrupt shootouts, creating a TikTok terror. Production design (Rick Heinrichs) turns Eddington into a character: rusted trailers, faded "Make America Graze Again" signs, a diner counter scarred like a battlefield.

Themes: America's Great Divide, Aster-Style

Eddington is Aster's scalpel to the MAGA mythos—lockdown as microcosm for polarization, where "freedom" fighters and "lawmen" mirror our tribal trenches. It skewers both sides: Goodie's authoritarian

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