Ari Aster’s Eddington Trailer: When Reality Is a Horror Movie

The small American town of Ari Aster's new Eddington doesn't look so different from the real world presented by CNN or the Drudge Report: People can spin anything into a conspiracy, government is turned against itself, and gunfire erupts with seemingly little provocation.

The small, fictional New Mexico town in the brand-new trailer for Eddington — set in 2020 — isn't so different from downtown Los Angeles right now, where local government clashes with the National Guard sent in by the president, suspicions run high, and the threat of violence feels close.

Though a complete film can of course go places only hinted at in a preview, the Eddington trailer falls into the same tricky predicament as many recent satire or horror films: How do you keep up with a real world more dramatic than the movies?

It feels quaint, for example, to see Joaquin Phoenix's Sheriff Joe Cross and Pedro Pascal's Mayor Ted Garcia face off over the direction of a small town, when in real life the president of the United States is threatening to arrest the governor of California.

And while we don't recall anyone in 2020 connecting anti-Covid masks with child trafficking — as Austin Butler's cult-figure preacher, Vernon Jefferson, does in the Eddington trailer — it sounds like exactly the kind of weird connection people would make at any moment in the conspiracy-mad 2020s.

Ari Aster's Eddington Mirrors Reality

Eddington, which premiered at Cannes to strong reviews and comes to theaters July 18, carries the tagline “hindsight is 2020” — that’s the long-ago year when the pandemic began — and an image of buffalo running off a cliff. (Indigenous people on the plains used to hunt and kill buffalo by chasing them into a panicked cliff jump.)

Recent projects like Jesse Armstrong's terrific Mountainhead and the new season of Black Mirror feel like they're racing to stay a few steps ahead of the real-life technical innovations that can make reality seem ever more dystopian. Once we turned to entertainment for something more exciting than our humdrum real lives.

Now we turn to entertainment for something not necessarily more boring, but easier to contain: It resolves, more or less, at the end of the movie, or episode, or season.

Also Read: In Ari Aster’s Eddington: Small-Town Covid Tensions With Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler

Turning off the news can feel like hiding. Part of our instinct is to confront the problems of the world, in hopes of fixing them. But they can also add to a sense of learned helplessness that might make us worse at fighting for a better world.

How do we strike the right balance between being informed and doomscrolling?

Eddington presents interesting questions, but not escape: The scenario in the trailer parallels our real lives too precisely. As tension of masks and fear of the virus sweep through Eddington in 2020, Butler's social media tirades add fuel to the brushfire. Pascal's mayor pleads for calm. Phoenix's sheriff traffics in grievance.

Emma Stone, as the sheriff's wife, seems disgusted, and wondering how she's gotten dragged into this insanity. When she types "Horrible" in the comments section of a Vernon Jefferson video entitled "How Masks Make It Easier to SMUGGLE CHILDREN," is she referring to the practice of smuggling children? Or the fear-stoking tactics of the video?

It's been a cliche for years to say real events parallel a horror movie. But it's saying something when the director of Hereditary and Midsommar turns to the news for inspiration.

And reality is not, to be clear, a horror movie.

You can turn off a horror movie.

Main image: A scene in the trailer for Eddington, from Ari Aster, in theaters July 18 from A24.