Ari Aster Tackles The Pandemic In New Western Thriller

Ahead of Ari Aster’s new film Eddington premiering at the 2025 edition of Cannes, A24 has released a puzzling teaser trailer showing a world in chaos in the early days of 2020. Starring Joaquin Phoenix in a massive cowboy hat and a seemingly charismatic Pedro Pascal, Aster has described his latest film as “a film noir ensemble western dark comedy.” It seems like Aster is moving further away from more traditional horror territory and into something much more grounded in the horrors of our current cultural moment.

The official synopsis reads, “In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.”

May of 2020 was a troubling time for the world, where we all were trapped and isolated, trying to make sense of a new reality we quickly had to adapt to. With the use of Instagram videos and a seemingly endless feed of talking heads, the teaser pretty heavily hints towards a film all about humanity in the face of a worldwide pandemic. And with a setting like small town New Mexico, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of nightmare Aster has created in his fourth feature film.

His first two features, Hereditary and Midsommar, were squarely in horror territory, with cults slaughtering the innocent and heads rolling across pavement. Aster’s third feature, Beau is Afraid, is a different kind of film, one that borrows horrific elements to craft a bizarre epic about a man with an Oedipal complex and more anxiety than any single prescription could handle. From its first trailer, Eddington looks like it’s operating in a different lane entirely, but one that could still end in tragedy. Aster loves a nasty tragedy, after all.

Something else to note is the poster (included below) depicts a buffalo jump, which was a hunting practice used by Indigenous populations that lived on the plains of North America. A group of hunters would drive the buffalo off a cliff, but this wouldn’t kill the animals. As the animals laid on the ground with broken limbs, another group at the bottom of the cliff would then slaughter the bison. A rather apt metaphor for everyday people being led to the slaughter.

Phoenix and Pascal star in Eddington with Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Amélie Hoeferle, Clifton Collins Jr., and William Belleau, with Austin Butler and Emma Stone also appearing.

Eddington comes to theaters on July 18, 2025.

Tags: Eddington

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