Ari Aster’s Eddington premiered at the Cannes Film Festival today. Unfortunately, the mixed reviews suggest it’s more of a Beau is Afraid than another Midsommar or Hereditary. The film takes place in May of 2020, and revolves around 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.
Following the premiere, Aster and the cast enjoyed applause from the audience. “I don’t know what to say,” Aster said. “I don’t know what you think. I feel very privileged to be here. This is a dream come true.” Depending on what you read, the response in the theater was either “muted” or it was a rousing seven-minute standing ovation.
THR‘s David Rooney said Eddington is supposed to be a modern Western with a touch of dark comedy, but the film is “neither suspenseful nor funny enough to work as either. Mostly, it’s a distancing slog.” The review also compares it to Beau is Afraid, calling it just as “bloated, self-indulgent, rambling, crazily ambitious and commendably odd” as the 2023 film. Yeesh.
“Eddington takes digs both at sanctimonious liberalism and self-dealing conservatism, but it’s so careful to avoid taking a firm political stance that its barbs seldom land,” reads the review. “It also sticks a highly capable cast in user-unfriendly roles that pretty much leave us with no one to care about. It drops us back into that surreal summer five years ago, without the benefit of fresh perspective.“
Deadline‘s Damon Wise was more complimentary, although he admits that not every element comes together. He added that the film “is what you might call a big swing, a film that’s more serious than it first seems, seeing Covid as the Big Bang that landed us right where we are now. It’s about the elephant in the room: the emergent likes of QAnon, 4Chan and the Proud Boys, things that did more damage than Covid ever did, leaving a raw, still-festering wound. Without ceremony or mercy, Eddington rips the Band-Aid off, and not everyone is going to want to look at, or think about, what’s there underneath it.“
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman said Eddington “doesn’t get lost in the grim funhouse of its own conceits, the way Beau Is Afraid did. But it does grow a little…abstract. There’s an indulgent side to Ari Aster, and though it’s more under control here, you can feel him giving him into it. Yet it’s also inseparable from what makes him, in Eddington, such a stimulating filmmaker. He wants to show us the really big picture, and while Eddington isn’t a horror movie, it puts its finger on a kind of madness you’ll recognize with a tremor.“
Eddington is set to hit theaters on July 18.
