Eddington

The Pandemic Western That Asked: What If TikTok Was Armed?

Eddington is like bingeing a pandemic conspiracy forum while eating cowboy-shaped cookies dipped in existential dread. Ari Aster has somehow convinced Joaquin Phoenix to trade in his usual silent brooding for gun-barrel sermons about “reclaiming our sovereignty,” which is either about COVID or his neighbor stealing his recycling bin.

Pedro Pascal struts through town hall like a man who once read the Constitution on a bar napkin and now won’t take off his bolo tie. Emma Stone plays a quietly unraveling dollmaker, which is either a metaphor or just the side hustle of every mom in 2020. And Austin Butler—bless him—plays a TikTok prophet named Vernon Jefferson Peak (which also sounds like a state park where teens go missing). He spends most of the movie livestreaming end-times poetry while standing on a pickup truck bed surrounded by chickens and despair.

Set in May 2020, this “modern Western” includes everything we were too emotionally fragile to relive: mask feuds, civil unrest, political cosplay, body doubles, livestreamed showdowns, and the slow death of empathy, all shot in the gorgeous light of a world on fire. Critics are calling it a “masterpiece of anxiety” or “a film that made me want to live in a bunker made of Clorox wipes.” There are reportedly moments so intense audiences gasp, cry, or just quietly reevaluate their social media habits.

I haven’t seen Eddington, but based on the trailers, the reviews, and the sweaty online discourse, I’m pretty sure it’s the only film where a cowboy debates virology while doomscrolling next to a burning Walgreens. And honestly? That’s cinema.4 out of 5 cultish influencers baking sourdough while explaining The Deep State via interpretive square dance.