Welcome back to the Pandemic days of New Mexico
Remember that feeling when you started to see people refuse to wear a mask after months of isolation and fear? That moment when I would just keep to myself, but sympathize with both the person refusing the mask and those who tried to force their socially sanctioned fears on them in the form of a mask. It’s important to put it from this perspective and not one of “what the hell were they thinking” to either side of this coin because that’s what the movie tries to do, and succeeds in many respects. At least until the film kept going.
You see, just like the pandemic days, the fervor and hysteria increase as the film goes along. There is a palpable sense of rising friction for the main character, Joe Cross, played to perfection by Joaquin Phoenix. The sheriff of a New Mexico town with a population of only 2,435, Joe refuses the mask mandate and tries to preach for humanity in the face of fear because COVID is not in their town, according to him.
On the other side of the equation is Mayor Ted Garcia, played by Pedro Pascal in a limited role. Despite what the trailers say, this is a minor role that shows him as a smart, successful, and maybe just a little cocky public servant with a questionable deal to put a server farm in the city limits at the potential expense of town water to cool it. This is all important because Eddington wants to show multiple sources of antagonism to lead the viewer down a rabbit hole of uncertainty, just like what we all survived back in 2020.
Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025) would then purport to be an experience of watching that sheriff launch a mayoral campaign while the country around them spiraled following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Social media videos of Antifa are sprinkled among the white young adults in the city who protest in fervor over the atrocity, while being labeled a riot after some windows get broken. The film is especially sarcastic with these white young protestors, at several points showing them self-identifying as privileged while giving speeches they have no right to give.
Accompanying the film, the soundtrack was something I couldn’t help but notice at certain parts. A rattlesnake tail rattles as the Sheriff confronts the social authority of mask usage. The music swelled when the group of not even 50, I don’t think, protested injustice. Fear-induced single piano keys broke silence as the sheriff’s worst fears start to materialize. There was some weirdness with the sound, though, like Katy Perry’s “Firework” playing during a surprising altercation between sheriff and mayor, though maybe it was funny to some. For me, it just felt awkward or forced like the rest of the sound, which I wonder how much was on purpose to even more increase the unsettling nature of the film.
Unfortunately, at a certain point, I couldn’t help but wonder, how long was this movie? I felt like I’d been watching a particularly good movie about being unsettled, confused, and unable to figure out what was ultimately going to happen. At that point, I was almost an hour and a half into the movie, and there was still an hour to go. That’s when the movie started to wear out its welcome, and for me started a timer of anticipation to see its conclusion.
While I had to wait a bit longer for the finale to start, I was happy with the conclusion. It’s nothing like what one would think the story is leading to, but satisfying nonetheless. Joaquin Phoenix is, again, a powerhouse performer. The film does finally get to its violence in the posters and trailers, giving life to the conspiracy-induced delirium of the Sheriff in shades of Rambo taking on his aggressors. Though this time, Sheriff Joe is forced to fight for his life against Antifa made manifest. As a side note, the creation and use of footage of what was rumored and repeated yet never documented and proved, fully black clad Antifa are shown in this film that includes footage of several true events that were filmed during the rise of protests in 2020. I think that’s important because the film is selling this as a partial right to be invested in disbelief while creating fictitious reasons to justify this.
Eddington is a better-than-good movie that was about 45 minutes too long. I enjoyed the catharsis in the theater when the sheriff told the mayor “6 feet”, using his own lockdown rules against him. I liked moments like this early on in the film before it got past humor into seriousness. Then the truth of the film takes hold and for 2 hours reminds you what it was like to keep going down the rabbit hole of madness on the internet in isolation was like. In that respect, the film was fantastic. In the respect of entertainment, it was a struggle to finish.
8.5/10