Welcome to Eddington – population: all of us. The new film from writer-director Ari Aster transports audiences to a town on the brink of combustion that, in a way, we’ve all been residents of for five years now. Look out your window right now and there may not be a New Mexico mountain range hugging the horizon like in the Eddington of Aster’s movie. But chances are you’ve absolutely felt it in the air – the same dread, the same fury, the same entropy and exhaustion that pollutes that dustbowl town.

May 2020 – when Eddington takes place – was a time of neighbours split into culture war factions, with a steady hum of social media misinformation fueling their paranoid obsessions. We were already tipping towards that new age of civic hostility before the pandemic, mask mandates and the death of George Floyd, the auteur will tell you. But that year saw us cross a precipice that we’ve yet to turn back towards. Maybe we’re unable to.

Which is what makes Eddington – Ari’s fourth film, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone – feel so vital and yes, so scary. The filmmaker’s first two features, Hereditary and Midsommar, saw him heralded as the new king of horror. It took his first film set in the real world – his first movie with nothing supernatural or occult-themed about it – to deliver arguably his most terrifying scares. His previous films, 2023’s Beau Is Afraid included, were nightmares his audiences were allowed to wake up from. Can you really say the same, stepping out of the cinema after seeing Eddington?

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