Eddington

Releasing in the UK by Universal on 22 August 2025.

After his surrealist tragicomedy Beau is Afraid split audiences back in 2023, indie horror darling Ari Aster returns with a film that’s proving to be just as shocking - and no less divisive.

Ditching his usual horror genre in favour of a satirical, black comedy route, Aster’s latest film Eddington - whilst a fictional story - takes place during the early (and very real) days of the pandemic, as it examines the political and social turmoil caused by a contested mayoral election fought between Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).

Set in the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico, the conflict between Cross and Garcia pits neighbour against neighbour, in an all too familiar story of the mass societal rifts that occurred in the wake of the pandemic. As IndieWire’s David Ehrlich stated, Eddington is:

“the first major Hollywood movie that’s been willing to see the COVID pandemic for the hellacious paradigm shift that it was — as the moment when years of technologically engineered polarization tore a forever hole in the social fabric of a country that was already coming apart at the seams.”

Despite not being a typical horror film like Aster’s Hereditary or Midsommar, Eddington is terrifying in its own way; an ambitious mix of sharp social satire, dark comedy and paranoia, that is sure to unsettle viewers in its (still) too-close-for-comfort subject matter.

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