Ari Aster’s Eddington: The Prophetic Satirical Criticism of America & the Myth of the West

Image Courtesy: A24/Square Peg Films

By Quinn Kinsella

Ari Aster is a polarizing director. With his one-two punch horror releases Hereditary and Midsommar, he revolutionized the horror genre. His follow-up was the 3-hour nightmare-comedy Beau Is Afraid, which became a box office bomb and a cult classic overnight. And with his fourth feature, Aster proves himself as confident as ever in his searing commentary on the modern day division of America and the COVID-19 pandemic. The first great movie about the Coronavirus of 2020, Eddington also serves as  a warning. But is America ready to reflect, and is hindsight really 2020?

Eddington is a modern western film utilizing old-school techniques to capture the mystique of the American West with a modern political tilt. From the very beginning, audiences know the film will conclude in an explosion (heck, it’s an Ari Aster movie) but they don’t know which spark will get there first. It is an open-ended time capsule of an ultra-specific era that offers a neutral view of America. In an age where everyone’s opinion is shared, Aster chooses to withhold his own, and simply put a mirror up to America.  No side is seen through rose-tinted glasses, revealing America as it was in May, 2020.

With the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10th, 2025 at the Utah Valley University, the satirical elements of Eddington don’t seem so ironic. To kick off the jarring third act of Eddington, a significant political figure in the film is assassinated in cold blood. While the “over-the-top” set pieces of Aster’s fourth feature may not appear to be anything short of provocative, they are prophetic when current events are taken into account. Kirk’s assassination is not the first politically-driven murder recently. Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman was killed in her home in July of this year and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered by Luigi Mangione in December of 2024. Charlie Kirk joins the ranks of an unsettling series of deaths, sparked by a great divide in American culture and belief.

Similarly, Eddington, a fictional small town in New Mexico, is torn apart at the height of the 2020 pandemic and the opposing political views its inhabitants hold.  This creates a tangible and relatable tension that is ripped to shreds by the end. Eddington may be a small town in New Mexico, but it serves as a surrogate for the entirety of the United States.

Eddington sees a reteaming of Aster and Joaquin Phoenix, a director-actor duo that will undoubtedly become synonymous in the coming decade. The two are perfectly suited for each other; their creative stride synchronizing for an effect that is palpable through the screen. You can see Phoenix actively digging through his character’s past, mining his insecurities to deliver a meticulous portrait of modern male fragility. Phoenix plays small-town sheriff Joe Cross, who decides to run for mayor after butting heads with Pedro Pascal’s tech-forward current mayor Ted Garcia. Phoenix has incredible chemistry with Pascal, and sparks fly when they share scenes. These two fictional characters are a melange of all the political facets of 2020, making for one of the most grounded and well-realized modern political thrillers. 

The performances throughout are amazing. The standouts are Diedre O’Connell and Michael Ward, playing Joe Cross’ mother-in-law and deputy, respectively. O’Connell is the comedic relief in this anxiety- and conspiracy-driven film. Her oftentimes ignored and absurd one-liners overlapping other dialogue in an altmanesque way put audiences right back to the uncertainty of 2020. Michael Ward portrays the sheriff’s ambitious deputy Michael Cooke who gets roped into the deepening conspiracy in the latter half of the movie. An honest and good cop, Cooke aspires to climb the ranks of the sheriff’s department, but the Black Lives Matter protests in his small town and throughout the country pull him in conflicting directions. Perhaps one of the more complex characters in the film, Ward portrays Cooke with an introspective and meticulous performance. There are points in the film where the relationship between Cooke and Phoenix's Cross feel strangely akin to a father and son relationship, only making the conclusion that much more upsetting.

Though this modern western is not Aster’s best film, it is his most daring and provocative. It is also his most seamlessly executed. Eddington sees the first-time separation of Aster’s longtime collaboration with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski. Aster tapped Uncut Gems’s cinematographer Darius Khondji to shoot his COVID-19 Western, proving to be an excellent decision. Eddington is Aster’s visually flattest movie, but his framing and blocking exceed his previous three features. In keeping with Western films that often used studio sets and matte paintings, the expansiveness of Southwest America is compressed into a 2-dimensional backdrop where the sparring mayoral candidates find themselves in a stand off. The iconic visual of two cowboys facing each other with hands poised to reach for their revolvers is replicated, this time the distance is a COVID-safe six feet and their six-shooters are traded for the seemingly more dangerous smart phone. The wide shots show the futility of the characters’ scheming and reduce them to specks of dust; the inhabitants of Eddington are shouting into a void and misinterpreting their echoes as enemy fire.

The myth of the American West is married with the concept of masculinity as a character trait, obtained. Phoenix’s character Joe Cross is emasculated numerous times in the film. Living under the shadow of his father-in-law, who was the sheriff before him, Cross is grasping for an opportunity to prove himself as strong as the characters in the Westerns he grew up watching. A shoot-out in the third act of the film sees Cross firing round after round, pausing to take a puff from his inhaler. Cross’ male fragility is chipped away again and again, not by the people around him, but by his own inability to appreciate himself and the unrealistic standards he holds himself to. Early in the film, he uses his asthma as an excuse to not wear a mask when mask mandates are in full effect. His asthma, something born with him and unchangeable, seems to be the one weakness he admits to. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood never had to stop mid-duel to take a puff from an inhaler or inject themselves with insulin. They were “real men” and the epitome of cowboys. That is why the idolization of these figures is not only harmful, but causes dishonesty of self within the people watching them. 

At the core of every Ari Aster film is artifice. His characters and their doomed fates seem to be controlled by some greater power. In Hereditary’s third act, a demonic cult is revealed to be pulling the strings of the ill-fated family. In Midsommar, the smiley cult members have been in control of the narrative since the beginning. And in Beau Is Afraid, the titular character's mother is a conniving and manipulating force in his life. The orchestration of artifice in Eddington is both more complex and straightforward. Austin Butler’s conspiracy-spouting character urges us to “open our eyes” to what is truly going on. Every character is living in their own world, and they all seem to be convinced some higher power is in control, though no one agrees on what that higher power is. The only thing uniting these characters is their division. The real antagonist of this film is screens. Aster and Khondji photograph phone and computer screens with such mastery that one is immediately able to see the precariousness of the information-driven world we live in. It is easier than ever to spread misinformation, and we are more susceptible than ever to believe what we see. Or, what we want to see. 

Go into Eddington with an open mind. Aster is willingly walking into a burning building by making a film as daring as this one. Although ultimately acting as a satire, Eddington also makes a case for reflection without nostalgia. 2020 is a year few people look back on with nostalgia, and perhaps that can be a window into meaningful reflection. The tagline of Eddington is “Hindsight is 2020” and that is exactly what Ari Aster is urging us to do. He pleads for us to look back and reassess where we were, where we are, and where we are going. Eddington is a warning. 

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Quinn Kinsella is a film major in his senior year at The City College of New York. He is the Managing Editor at The Paper and covers pop culture and on-campus arts and culture. In his free time, he enjoys watching movies, reading books, and writing poetry.