Eddington marks the fourth feature film by director Ari Aster, a filmmaker with a brief yet potent body of work. Aster has achieved what many directors spend their entire careers chasing — a distinctive voice. His style, atmosphere, and the unsettling tone that permeates his stories are unmistakable. His macabre humor seeps through even in the most disturbing moments. With Aster, there is never a middle ground — he draws sharp lines and forces the audience to choose a side.

After walking the paths of horror with Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), Aster gave us a dark psychological drama in Beau Is Afraid (2023). Now, with Eddington (2025), the New York–born director turns to the western genre to deliver what is, so far, the most political story of his career. It’s a razor-sharp social and political critique, wrapped in perverse dark humor and set against an atmosphere worthy of the great duels of the Old West.

Set during the COVID pandemic in a fictional small town in the American Southwest, the film follows the sheriff and the mayor, who become locked in a power struggle for control of the city. What begins as a political conflict soon devolves into a personal duel, unleashing a spiral of violence and chaos that spirals out of control. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Joe Cross, the skeptical sheriff, while Pedro Pascal plays Ted García, the cunning politician who sees opportunity amid the turmoil. On these two pillars, Aster builds his screenplay, guiding us seamlessly from drama to dark comedy, and from action to satire. Every line of dialogue and every situation is carefully crafted to expose, beneath the irony and the chaos, a sharp sociopolitical commentary that runs through the entire film.

Eddington is a quintessential Aster journey: a slow, unnerving descent into the human psyche. Though he saves the most visceral moment for the final act, the true emotional blow lands long before, as the tension quietly erodes our nerves. The inevitable massacre is merely the consequence of a psychological collapse meticulously prepared. Joaquin Phoenix delivers a performance of the highest caliber — intense, nuanced, and magnetic — while Pedro Pascal perfectly complements him as his moral and emotional counterpoint. The music and cinematography blend flawlessly to evoke the spirit of classic westerns, and each face-off between Joe Cross and Ted García powerfully recalls the legendary gunfights of cowboy cinema.

We wait — almost with morbid anticipation — for Aster to shake us as he always does. Yet Eddington burns slowly, and when madness finally erupts, nothing can prepare us for its final sequence. In that climax lies the full mastery of a director who controls every detail of his mise-en-scène and executes his vision with surgical precision. From the chaos emerges a piercing reflection on political power, moral decay, and the irrationality of human nature under extreme pressure. Aster pays homage to the Western while dismantling it from within, blending external violence with the inner storm of his characters, and reminding us that the line between order and madness is perilously thin.