Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025)

'Who is that masked man?!'

I have yet to warm up to Ari Aster, a talented filmmaker who does inventively staged and shot twists on classic horror but has yet to deliver a cohesive feature. Hereditary his debut starts off with a fairly unique premise-- a mildly dysfunctional family where the horror arises not from supernatural evil or witches' covens but from a peanut allergy; later Aster drags in the evil and covens, in a weak-tea attempt to emulate Rosemary's Baby. Midsommar is Aster's stab at remaking The Wicker Man with twice the budget and half the subtle wit. Beau is Afraid is arguably his most original work-- or at least his work with the most wide-ranging influences such that it seems original, even autobiographical-- and perhaps the one feature I like best to date. 

Eddington feels like a step backwards. Aster starts off well-- he almost always starts off well-- introducing a small town and half a dozen of the interlinked characters of that town, mainly Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and his boss Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) and as Phoenix usually plays characters who lean into their awkward grotesqueness and Pascal usually plays charismatic patriarch figures you can be sure these two alpha males will lock horns at the mayor's re-election campaign. 

(WARNING: plot twists and conclusion discussed in explicit detail!)

You're not quite sure where this is all going, but Pascal is charismatic enough and Phoenix grotesque enough that your interest is piqued; then a left-turn twist, or (as with the best twists) one you see coming a mile away but is still a shock when it happens-- can't say more save Mayor Garcia's slapping Cross' face in full view of the town's fundraisers triggers something in Cross and suddenly he's staging a New Mexico version of Bernard Tavernier's Coup de Torchon, arguably the best-ever adaptation of Jim Thompson to the big screen and one of the best bleakest noirs ever. O it isn't perfect; Phoenix is no Philippe Noiret and Aster doesn't have anywhere near the effortless precision of Tavernier (if anything his grip on the camera has the frenzied feel of a cameraman on a bender) but still-- admirable ambitions, amazing approach, awe-inspiring near-miss.

Just when he's close to pulling off something impressive Aster has to drag in an all-powerful shadow organization-- think Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View only with less intellect and more firepower. A cadre of killers is flown in by plane who apparently have the ability to stalk anyone and everyone; they can even track a running fugitive in the dark to fire a string of spectacular near-misses from a bouncing all-wheel SUV in hot pursuit-- looks great as a Mission Impossible-style action sequence on the big screen (Phoenix runs more like normal human being than Tom Cruise ever could in his best pair of Reeboks) but makes little sense otherwise. Cut to a few years later, because Aster doesn't have the momentum or patience to develop the story to where he wants his characters to end up. 

Politically-- hard to avoid the topic if the main action is a re-election campaign-- Aster determinedly sits on the fence, ignoring the wood splinters sinking into both cheeks. He skewers liberals on the small details, the way they micromanage their correctness till their membership badge gleams with impeccable shine (the torturous way they negotiate the thorny thickets of political correctness' ever-evolving grammar is actually a fun listen); the conservatives usually hold power so their postures are almost always more laid back-- they've got money to lose, large spans of real estate, access to actual power, so they're naturally more cautious about flashing it or exerting it or releasing it from their avaricious little paws. On the whole conservatives land on top-- if not the powers that have always been then up-and-comers who bought into the myth (of course for the myth to work-- as with most vampire lore or witches' spells-- you actually have to have faith) and what on first blush may look like black satire looks suspiciously like affirmation of the status quo. Is horror an inherently conservative genre? Maybe, at least the kind that leans into shadow groups and conspiracy theories. 

And that's it, all I've got, except to note that handsome as Aster's camerawork and editing and occasional gruesome butchery can be (thanks to Darius Khondji who in earlier this year helped Bong Joon ho with Mickey 17 and later this same year Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme), it's hard to think of any single image or moment or character that stays with you once the lights go up. Aster has talent-- I've admitted as much-- and can put out the odd original idea (tho not as original as you, and I suspect even he, thinks), but I'm still waiting for the great work that announces the arrival of a genuine artist.