A24’s timely thriller “Eddington” will be available to stream on HBO Max beginning on Nov. 14.
Helmed by “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid” director Ari Aster, “Eddington” stars Joaquin Phoenix as a small town sheriff who runs for office amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. His opponent and the incumbent mayor is played by Pedro Pascal, who espouses more left-leaning politics and urges citizens of Eddington, New Mexico, to wear masks. Phoenix’s character is an anti-mask conservative whose life is soon turned upside down by the chaos of the pandemic, political battles of the election and escalating violence.
The “Eddington” cast also includes Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Amélie Hoeferle, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Austin Butler and Emma Stone.
The film was a critical hit but underwhelmed at the box office after it opened to $4.3 million and in sixth place. It went on to make $13 million globally.
“Just when you think you’ve got ‘Eddington’ pinned down as a coherent and even conventional suspense tale, the movie wriggles out from under you and enters a terrain of stranger things,” writes Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman in his review. “It 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.”
