The first reviews for Eddington, the latest film from Ari Aster, have arrived following its premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and they’re proving to be just as polarizing as expected—especially for anyone who thought Beau Is Afraid was a one-off in Aster’s increasingly experimental trajectory. If Hereditary and Midsommar marked his rise as a horror auteur, and Beau Is Afraid challenged audiences with its three-hour fever dream of neurosis and surrealism, Eddington may be his most confrontational work yet—politically, structurally, and tonally.
Set in May 2020 during the early height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Eddington reimagines the classic American Western through a modern, chaotic, and politically charged lens. The story centers on a small-town standoff in Eddington, New Mexico, between a sheriff (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and a defiant mayor (Pedro Pascal), as tensions escalate and neighbors turn on each other in a community buckling under fear, grief, and rage.
Also starring Emma Stone and Austin Butler, Eddington draws on the iconography of Westerns but filters it through a hyper-modern lens—complete with face masks, viral paranoia, and boiling social unrest. It’s not just a period piece about 2020—it’s a pointed mirror held up to the fractured, performative modern American landscape, and it’s not playing safe.
Early reactions from Cannes attendees reveal a sharply divided response. Variety and IndieWire have praised Eddington as a bold, original, and completely unclassifiable entry into the Western canon. The Hollywood Reporter and The Wrap, on the other hand, have described the film as self-indulgent, deliberately incoherent, and another step away from substance in favor of spectacle.
This kind of reaction has become familiar territory for Ari Aster. When Beau Is Afraid was released in 2022, it sparked fierce debate over its structure, tone, and message. For some, it was a masterwork of surreal psychological horror; for others, it was a meandering exercise in indulgence. Based on early Eddington reviews, it seems this new film leans far closer to Beau Is Afraid than the relatively more focused horror narratives of Hereditary or Midsommar. And for longtime fans of Aster’s work, that’s probably a sign that Eddington will continue to challenge, confuse, and provoke in equal measure.
Whether or not Eddington finds the same kind of staying power as Hereditary or even the cult fandom that’s followed Midsommar, it’s already shaping up to be one of the most talked-about films of the year. It’s messy. It’s political. It’s ambitious. And like all things Ari Aster, it’s completely unwilling to make things easy.
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