After bursting into Hollywood with Hereditary, Ari Aster has proven himself to be one of the most interesting directors in Hollywood. Now, Aster is back with Eddington, a contemporary Western that stars Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, and Pedro Pascal.
In our first look at the movie, we see what looks like a social media feed that features videos of all the main characters. The movie seems to be set during the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the teaser suggests that Phoenix plays a right-wing sheriff who comes into conflict with the mayor in the small New Mexico town of Eddington.
“If you value your life, you should think twice because the people at Eddington like guns,” Phoenix says in the trailer. “Your pain is not a coincidence. You are not a coincidence. We are not a coincidence,” Butler adds later on.
Although the movie seems to be a straightforward examination of the ways social media is rotting the brains of even functional adults, it’s a safe guess to suspect that Aster has more on his mind than just that. Anyone who has seen movies like Midsommar or Beau is Afraid knows that Aster is unafraid of getting weird, and he’s brought together an incredible ensemble this time to tell his story.
Eddington is set to premiere next month at the Cannes Film Festival, and will then hit theaters across the country in July. If past Aster projects are any indication, we should be prepared for something strange and entirely singular.
