Eddington has a whole lot of nothing to say about the chaotic year 2020, but it’s got a whole lot of content to show. Graphic nudity, crude language and intense violence take the place of any sort of message this movie may have had.
Like the residents in most small towns in the United States, the good folks of Eddington might tell you that one of the pros of small-town life is the community. People depend on each other. Everyone knows everyone.
But it also means that everyone knows everyone’s drama, too.
Historically, everyone knows that town sheriff Joe Cross and town mayor Ted Garcia have beef with each other. But their disagreements are about to get a whole lot worse.
It’s May 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 is fresh on the mind, and New Mexico has just enacted a statewide mask mandate—something Ted’s keen to enforce in Eddington. The mandate doesn’t sit well with Joe: He’s got asthma, and those masks make it difficult to breathe. Besides, no one in Eddington even has the virus, so what’s the point?
Ted won’t budge, not even when his mandate sends an elderly man out the door of a grocery store for refusing to comply. After a spat with Ted in the store, Joe decides that if Ted won’t stand up against the government, he will. So Joe announces his intention to run for mayor. And if he wins, he’ll replace Ted and stand in open defiance toward the state.
Joe covers his police car in a variety of disparaging campaign slogans:
“Your [sic] being manipulated,” reads one.
“Ted Garcia works for the governor, not for you,” claims another.
“Get this virus out of office,” says a third above a picture of Ted’s face.
The town’s support is divided. It fractures further when teen protesters, upset about the death of George Floyd, take to the street, vandalizing storefronts and blocking traffic. Chaos reigns. The man who was your neighbor yesterday is your enemy today, standing in the way of progress.
Suddenly, “Everyone knows everyone!” starts to feel less friendly and more dangerous.
For all of its flaws, Eddington showcases just how fast people are to paint others as “the enemy.” Those who do not fully side with us must be evil incarnate. And by taking the polarizing views in the film to the nth degree, Eddington showcases the absurdity of the situation.
There’s also something to be said here about the effect social media plays in radicalizing and isolating us. Throughout the film, characters use social media to belittle others, doomscroll and lock themselves into their own echo chambers. Those habits only push tensions higher.
Joe’s wife, Louise, becomes obsessed with Vernon, a New Age online influencer who’s obsessed with seeing the spiritual in everything. “It is against God, what is happening—a new god is rising,” he says. And when Joe sees Louise’s homemade dolls, he claims that God is speaking through her. Later, he says that he’ll achieve victory because he has “fortified [himself] in Christ” and has the Holy Spirit. Louise prays silently over her meal. Someone swears on God.
When explaining the presence of Native American police officers at a crime scene, a character describes one man’s job as simply “[going] around blessing stuff.” A conspiracy theorist rants about “Jesuit-educated Gavin Newsom.” We hear a couple of references to the devil. Joe hopes to motivate the townsfolk to vote for him to “save our soul.”
We see a naked man dragged to a toilet, his genitals fully visible to the camera. A doomscrolling teen spies a woman’s rear on his feed, only covered by near-nonexistent lingerie. Louise sells homemade dolls, one of which appears to be of a naked woman.
One guy strips to his underwear. A man and woman kiss passionately but stop before going further. A male teen jokingly encourages another male teen to send a picture of his genitals to his female crush. There are a couple of references to sex.
On a Zoom call, participants label themselves via their pronouns, including someone who elects to use “they/them.”
Vernon tells Joe that he had been “gifted off” when he was a child to a group of pedophiles who would remove children’s clothes and do unspeakable things to them. He and other children were hunted by the adults, and he was the only one to escape alive. Another couple likewise talk about living through a similar experience.
Louise becomes vocally upset at hearing the stories, which causes Joe to ask her if Ted or her father sexually abused her. Though he doesn’t get a response, Joe accuses Ted of raping Louise when she was 16 (the two dated when they were younger), impregnating her and forcing her to abort her baby. Louise then clarifies that while she was abused as a child, Ted hadn’t done anything to her. Still, the incident makes it difficult for Louise to want to be intimate with Joe.
We see roughly a dozen people die in the film, including a high school boy, shot dead in his home. Their deaths tend to be gratuitously graphic: We see spilling blood and exploding heads, and bodies drop with uncomfortable realism.
Someone dies from what seems to be a landmine, and we see chunks of his dismembered limbs and body scattered on the ground. Other people get shot, and blood and guts spew out from their wounds. Someone takes a knife to the head in a particularly gruesome moment.
A man falls through a roof and hurts his back. We see a masked group attack police officers in a gunfight. There’s a reference to suicide. A homeless man tosses Joe to the ground. Ted slaps Joe.
We hear the f-word roughly 55 times and the s-word about 25 times. Other vulgarities, such as “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k,” “h—,” “p-ss” and “crap” are used, too. People other slurs and personal insults, too, such as “f-ggot,” “retard” and “whore.” God’s name is used in vain 13 times, including one instance paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise taken in vain three times.
There’s a reference to a fentanyl and an opioid overdose. Two teens smoke a joint. Other people smoke cigarettes. Joe ingests pills.
A homeless man drowns his sorrows in a variety of liquor. Others consume liquor and wine, too. Teens drink beer at a gathering. We’re told that a teen is in jail for drinking.
Teens scream out “cops and the Klan go hand-in-hand!” Others spray-paint a swastika on Joe’s campaign sign. We hear a variety of discriminatory comments regarding many different races. To capitalize on Black Lives Matter momentum, Joe plans to promote a Black employee; when he later hears about the BLM protests, he writes a reminder to record it to help boost his polling numbers. Someone erects a statue that’s meant to represent white supremacy.
People peddle a variety of conspiracy theories throughout the movie about real-life issues.
A man claims that child predators can truly love their victims.
I don’t think it’s a secret that the same guy who directed Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid probably wasn’t vying to make the next contender for a Plugged In Movie Award. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’d be some problematic content in Eddington, too.
This satire of the events of 2020 doesn’t leave any side unscathed: Those who made “Stop the Spread” and toilet-paper collecting their whole personalities are just as belittled here as those who convinced themselves they’d unraveled the big government COVID conspiracy even though they hadn’t yet mastered the difference between “your” and “you’re.”
Mocked, too, are BLM, Antifa, radicalized teens plagued with white guilt, cryptocurrency fanatics, New Age-syncretized Christian adherents, trigger-happy gun owners, overzealous yet half-informed Gen Z protesters and more. The film even throws racial stereotypes around in all about every direction.
The problem is that no one from any side leaves any better for having watched the film, since there seems to be no point to take from it. We never reach any sort of conclusion or overarching message. Perhaps that in and of itself is the point to glean, that 2020’s chaos was simply ridiculous and pointless. But it doesn’t exactly make for good cinema.
Eddington simply comes off like the film equivalent of a two-and-a-half hour Twitter/X argument come to life. And while its first half offers a story that might have had a promising payoff, the second half might as well have been a different COVID-induced fever dream entirely. There must have been some difficulty in figuring out how to end the movie, because it sort of just … ends (which is apparently becoming something of a theme in our reviews of Ari Aster films).
Still, that doesn’t stop this director from inserting a whole mess of content, which devolves deeper into depravity the longer the movie rolls. One moment, we’re watching a man get slapped across the face. The next, limbs fly and heads explode. One scene seems as if it was included just to add full frontal male nudity to the movie. And those masks sure can’t filter out any profanities.
I’m just not sure who Eddington was meant for. I mean, do you want to relive those chaotic days cranked up to 11? I sure don’t.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
