Inside Ari Aster’s 'Eddington': A Modern Western Set in 2020 — and Why It’s Anti-Nostalgia

What happens when a horror auteur turns his lens on the pandemic? With Eddington, Ari Aster — the director behind Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau Is Afraid — trades the supernatural for something more current: May 2020.

The film is set in a dusty New Mexico town under lockdown, where a local sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) clashes with the mayor (Pedro Pascal) as fear, protest, and confusion ripple through the streets. But this isn’t a period piece looking back. Aster calls it "anti-nostalgia".

"I don’t think we’ve metabolized what happened during lockdown," he says. "We’re still living it."

That sense of ongoing crisis defines the story. Characters seem disconnected from each other — and themselves — as they navigate not just a virus, but the fragmented digital reality that shapes their lives.

The film leans into the structure of a Western, but twists it into something new. People know they’re playing roles — the sheriff, the mayor, the protester — yet those roles feel strangely empty, shaped more by online narratives than lived experience. Aster says he chose the genre because it reflects how America builds and breaks itself.

And then there's the casting. After working with Phoenix on Beau Is Afraid, Aster knew what he wanted. "Joaquin and Pedro together are surprisingly like a combustible, great pair," he says. Their dynamic fuels the film’s tension — part political standoff, part personal reckoning — surrounded by a cast that includes Emma Stone, Austin Butler, and Luke Grimes.

It may look like a Western. But Eddington isn’t about the past — it’s about how we’re still stuck in a present that keeps splintering.