![Ari Aster On ‘Eddington, Polarization, And Finding Clarity In Chaos [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/08105849/ari-aster-eddington.jpg "Ari Aster On ‘Eddington, Polarization, And Finding Clarity In Chaos [Interview]")
The American experiment has rarely looked so fraught—or so eerily familiar—as it does in Ari Aster’s “Eddington.” In the multi-layered film—a political-cultural satire, a neo-Western, a dark comedy, and a thriller—a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg in Eddington, New Mexico, where neighbor turns against neighbor and civility fractures into tribal survival. The conflict begins as a local dispute but soon expands into a feverish portrait of a nation at war with itself. The story also unfolds around the construction of a mysterious data center outside a small Midwestern town, but it’s less about technology than about the temperature of a country slowly turning on itself.
READ MORE: Fall 2025 Preview: 61 Movies To Watch
The stacked cast also features Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone, rounding out a sprawling ensemble that mirrors America’s fractured psyche. Aster, the filmmaker behind “Hereditary,” “Midsommar,” and “Beau Is Afraid,” once again channels dread into dark comedy and social commentary. Set against the ghostly stillness of 2020 America, “Eddington” transforms small-town paranoia into an allegory for division and disinformation. What begins as a civic showdown becomes an existential reckoning—both absurd and terrifying in its familiarity.
Now arriving on Blu-ray, “Eddington” continues to evolve with the moment. When Aster first wrote it in 2020, the world was still reeling from a global pandemic and political chaos. Half a decade later, its depiction of isolation, paranoia, and the commodification of identity feels prophetic. Watching it now, as AI headlines and cultural fracture points dominate the news, it’s less a time capsule than a slow-motion warning.
You started writing “Eddington” during the pandemic, which is also when the film is set. What was the spark that began it for you?
I started writing it in 2020, which is when the film takes place. I sensed that there was something in the air that I wanted to capture and reflect on—not only to meditate on, but to build a narrative out of, if only to exert some control at a time when I felt completely out of control. Writing became a way to better understand where we were by pulling back as far as I could and trying to paint a panoramic picture of the country, its culture, and the energy being generated.
Had you written it now, it might feel even darker. Do you think that’s true?
It didn’t feel like something was beginning, but it definitely felt like an inflection point—a moment when things were being meaningfully escalated. That’s a track we’ve been on ever since. In many ways, I see “Eddington” as a film about our current time, or perhaps about the moment we find ourselves in today. We haven’t really been able to metabolize what happened in 2020 because we’ve never truly emerged from it. It’s a tricky thing to paint a picture of a landscape while you’re still enshrouded in fog, but I wanted the film to reflect the feeling of this country in that moment, which I think is still the feeling of the country now.
Your films often feel like a kind of therapy—working through something personal or societal. Do you see it that way?
People can read into things however they wish, and I think that’s smart, but I’d say it’s a little reductive to call them therapy. Still, I believe that all art is therapeutic in some way, as long as it isn’t entirely calculated or designed solely to sell something. There’s always a therapeutic element in what I’m doing because I’m trying to work through something. If I’m not, my interest in that subject is limited. If it isn’t urgent—if it isn’t something that’s bothering me or consuming my thoughts—then it doesn’t sustain me creatively.
With “Eddington,” which I think is sneakily very personal, I wanted to make a film about our situation: how completely siloed off we are from one another, how successfully we’ve been divided. It feels as though the mechanisms of that division are too big to fail, almost unconquerable. It feels like we’re on a train heading with increasing velocity toward a brick wall. The film tries to grapple with that collective state of being.
This is something I said a lot when the film first came out, but I think it’s important to repeat that for anybody who hasn’t seen the film and is planning to watch it soon, you know, the, if you strip everything away, the movie is about a data center being built just outside of a small town. Right. And that really is the heart of this film.
It’s hovering in the background, but some of it feels eerily timely given conversations around AI and infrastructure. And prescient, given it was written five years ago.
Yeah. I said a lot when the film first came out, but I think it’s essential to reiterate that for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie and plans to watch it soon. If you strip everything away, that really is the heart of the film—a data center being built just outside a small town. That’s where the story begins, and from which everything radiates. When I first conceived of it, that setup felt like a way to discuss the larger systems at work—the intersection of progress, power, and disconnection. It’s interesting how, considering everything that has happened since, it feels even more relevant now.
You’ve only had about five to six months of distance since it first debuted at Cannes, but do you reflect on it differently at all now?
That was something I discussed frequently with my crew during post-production. The first half of the film should feel politically ambiguous. The audience shouldn’t be sure what we’re up to or where we stand. We knew that would alienate certain people, and that was part of the project. The film goes after sacred cows and challenges people’s identities, which are things we’re all deeply attached to.
To pull all the way back and say, “Something bigger is happening above us while we’re going at each other,” you have to be irreverent toward identity. You have to ask, “Where do these convictions come from? These things that feel so essential to who I am—how much of that is mine, and how much of it has been fed to me?” We’re all subject to the same forces. The film is a satire, and it’s trying to be like a real satire with real teeth. It’s trying to reach a place where we can see the humanity in people we’d otherwise abhor while also turning the mirror on ourselves.
So that reaction, the polarization—that was expected?
That reaction was inevitable. The film explores polarization, atomization, and the way we treat our beliefs as sacred property. There was no version of this where everyone would embrace it the same way. That was part of what excited me. We understood that we were taking risks, and we were curious to see how the culture would engage with it. Would it be rejected, embraced, or split people down the middle? It ended up being polarizing, which is what we expected, but I’m proud of it. I hope people stick with it through the end, because what the film is doing comes into focus gradually.
You mentioned recently that the reaction to “Beau Is Afraid” and “Eddington” was “devastating.” Did some of the mixed responses wound you?
That comment was pulled out of context. What I meant is that releasing a movie is always devastating, regardless of the reaction it receives. You live with a film for years—it exists in your head in a very particular way, and it’s deeply personal. Then you put it out into the world, and it becomes something else. Even when people love it, the way they talk about it never quite aligns with what it means to you. There’s a loss there.
That was true even with my first two films, which people largely embraced. I still felt disoriented afterward, because the way they were discussed didn’t quite match what the movies were to me. So whether something is polarizing or widely celebrated, the process of letting it go and hearing it reflected back to you can be alienating. That’s what I meant—it’s heartbreaking to release something that personal into the world and then see it take on a life of its own.
“Eddington” isn’t horror in a traditional sense, but it evokes a deeply unsettling feeling. Do you see it as horror?
No, I don’t think of it as horror, at least not in the traditional sense. The film is informed by dread, and that atmosphere probably permeates everything I make. “Eddington” is about people on a doomed trajectory, so there’s definitely anxiety built into it. But I see it more as a dark comedy, a political thriller, a Western satire, and an ensemble character study that evolves into an action movie by the end. It’s doing a lot of things at once. I wouldn’t call it horror, but I wouldn’t argue with someone who wants to.
Before we go, can you tell us what’s next for you?
I’m writing right now, trying to find what feels right. There are a few things I’m working on, but I’m still navigating what they are. I don’t have a clear sense yet, and I’m not in a rush. It’s about finding what’s worth pursuing.
There’s been talk or a rumor of something called “Acting Class” with Emma Stone—any truth to that?
Yes, that’s something I’m producing at the moment, but I’m not making it. That’s all I can say right now.
Thanks for the time, Ari. I really appreciate this conversation.
Thank you very much, Rodrigo.
“Eddington” is available on DVD and Blu-Ray this week and is already to buy or rent on digital HD platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Vudu, and Google Play Movies & TV.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
