Red, White, and Bruised: Eddington and the Machinery of American Collapse

What could possibly be more terrifying than the reality Americans wake up to every day? Certainly not the typical horror films filled with witches, vampires or zombies, which may carry some allegorical weight but rarely land with the force they intend to. No, the real horror is watching our leaders lie on national television, appoint officials who echo the language and behavior of fascists, and watching our basic human rights erode in real time while the country collectively looks away. Ari Aster’s Eddington (2025) isn’t a horror in the traditional sense, if it even belongs to one genre at all, but it unsettles us far more deeply by holding a mirror to the world we live in, even if many refuse to recognize their own reflection.

Set at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in a small town of the same name in New Mexico, Eddington deals with the feud between conservative Sheriff Joe Cross, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and likeable Mayor Ted Garcia, played by Pedro Pascal, which explodes into a battle of neighbor against neighbor, the consequences of performative activism, and reveals the not-so-secret yet true villain of it all: tech companies and corporate greed. The film begins with Sheriff Joe Cross declaring to run against incumbent Mayor Ted Garcia in response to newly implemented COVID-19 restrictions and Ted’s support of the construction of a giant data center right outside of town, which Joe wildly disapproves of.  As the campaign ramps up, Joe’s rhetoric grows more extreme. In a desperate move, he lies about Ted abusing his wife, Louise, years prior, which quickly unravels after Louise posts a video denying the claim and condemning Joe’s manipulation. Humiliated and isolated, Joe spirals, and Louise leaves him, finding solace in Vernon Jefferson Peak, a charismatic cult leader whose influence quietly spreads through town. The tension between Joe and Ted comes to a head at a campaign fundraiser, where Ted slaps Joe in front of a crowd after refusing to turn off the music, marking the point of no return. Days later, Ted and his teenage son are gunned down by a sniper—Joe—who attempts to frame the murders as the work of Antifa, but the town and local law enforcement don't buy it. 

As a private jet full of armed Antifa terrorists heads for Eddington, Officer Butterfly Jimenez of the nearby Pueblo tribe begins investigating mysterious deaths linked to Joe’s actions on their land, leading Joe to frame Officer Michael Ward, a young cop, to cover his tracks, but Butterfly starts to suspect the truth. The terrorists attack, kidnapping Michael and setting fires as Joe and Officer Guy Tooley, a cop and one of Joe’s supporters, try to rescue him, but a hidden bomb kills Guy and severely injures Michael. Joe returns to town, dodges snipers, breaks into a gun store, and accidentally shoots off Butterfly’s leg before being stabbed in the head by a terrorist. He survives, barely, thanks to Brian, a teen in the town who joined the BLM protests to impress a girl and filmed the rescue, but is left with severe brain damage. One year later, Joe is paralyzed but somehow elected mayor with Louise’s mother, Dawn, serving as his caregiver and public voice. The long-promised data company finally breaks ground, and the town is left fractured, haunted, and surveilled with its fate sealed not by one man’s cruelty, but by the quiet, relentless machinery of capital and control.  

I saw Eddington with a friend opening weekend in July, wooing her to join me with the promise of Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler, while failing to mention what the film was wholly about. She hadn’t seen any of Aster’s previous work, so with the expectation of a film filled with current sex symbols and maybe a little satire, she walked out of the theater thoroughly upset and disturbed. She asked me if I liked it, to which I responded, “Yes, I really did.” She couldn’t understand why I would like a film that reminded her of such a traumatic time period. While I didn’t have the same reaction to lockdown that most did, hers was characterized by fractured relationships as a result of differing political opinions and extended close proximity, which perfectly reflects one of the town of Eddington’s many tensions. For her, the terror and distress didn’t stem from the film’s many incredibly graphic and violent scenes—of which there are a lot—but from the reminder that this is the world we continue to live in, whether with masks and lockdowns or not. 

COVID unarguably changed the world in many ways, but most importantly instilled in us a deep-rooted distrust and paranoia of those around us, as well as normalizing the concept of isolation and differentiation among groups of people. This is displayed evidently in Eddington through the grocery store scene in which Sheriff Joe Cross walks in without a mask, only to be confronted by Mayor Ted Garcia. Their argument, ostensibly about public safety, quickly devolves into a philosophical clash: Ted insists on the necessity of mandates to protect the community, citing infection statistics and civic responsibility, while Joe challenges the enforcement as performative, authoritarian, and detached from individual realities. Their inability to truly hear each other mirrors the post-pandemic social landscape, where fear and ideology often replace dialogue, and where civic cooperation has become a battleground for personal identity and political allegiance. In that moment, Eddington captures how a simple act—wearing or refusing a mask—has become loaded with meaning, dividing communities not just physically, but emotionally and ideologically. The pandemic didn’t create these divisions, but it exposed and amplified them, which Aster leans into by showing how the erosion of public trust, stoked by leaders like Joe, isn’t merely a bug in the system but is the system itself. In other words, the chaos, confusion, and polarization aren’t signs that the system is malfunctioning but rather that it’s working exactly as designed. Political dysfunction, corporate overreach, and ideological warfare are the engines of power in America, so Joe’s rise isn't an accident, but the inevitable result of a country that rewards spectacle over substance and rage over reason.

Americans hate to be reminded of the true nature of our country and culture, as our guiding principle is to only focus on ourselves and to believe that the horrors we see happening to others could never reach us: the basis of American exceptionalism. In Eddington, this myth plays out on the microcosmic level in a small town that believes in its own version of the American dream and sees itself as self-reliant, patriotic, and immune to failure. But rather than rising to meet the crisis with unity or resilience, the town fractures along familiar lines of race, class, and ideology. As this happens, the myth begins to perish with the sheriff becoming a demagogue, the mayor becoming a scapegoat, and the people looking to violence or apathy as a response instead of organizing or rebuilding, which overtly rebuts American exceptionalism and displays disintegration wrapped in red, white, and blue. By the end of the film, the most stereotypically “American” character, the white male sheriff from small-town America seeking to uphold “freedom”, is elected mayor in a state of total mental and physical paralysis, speaking through a caregiver while the town slips under the control of a tech conglomerate without even realizing it, which is the endgame of exceptionalism: a country convinced of its greatness while being silently gutted from within.

Unlike the overt violence of Joe’s campaign or the Antifa attack, the tech company doesn’t need to scream to assert its dominance but simply watches and waits until things have become shattered enough for it to be able to seem to put the pieces back together. From the very beginning, the data center is proposed as inevitable, like a bad storm, which represents the kind of power the tech companies wield that doesn’t need votes, guns, or ideology, but wins through persistence and stability. In Eddington, the company doesn’t need to manipulate people directly; it just lets the town implode around its construction. As Joe and Ted tear each other apart and townspeople pick sides, the tech executives remain faceless, untouchable, and ultimately victorious. By the time the dust settles, the company has everything it wanted in land, compliance, and a divided population too exhausted and distracted to resist. This reflects the horror that isn’t the fact that a man like Joe could become mayor, but that his election doesn’t matter because their fates were sealed long before the first bullet was ever fired. The final irony is that while the town believes it has survived the worst in the pandemic, violence, and political upheaval, it has actually surrendered to something far more insidious and everlasting as democracy has been reduced to performance, warning us that we won’t be conquered by some villain or “them”, but that we’ll hand over control willingly and subconsciously, distracted by our own manufactured conflicts. A real-world echo of this can be seen in West Virginia, where in 2025, the state passed the Power Generation and Consumption Act, eliminating local governments’ authority to regulate data center developments. Despite community concerns about environmental impact, transparency and land use, including a proposed 10,000-acre site by Fundamental Data, residents and local officials were largely excluded from the decision-making process, demonstrating how tech companies are increasingly rewriting the rules so resistance is no longer viable and success becomes inevitable long before the public realizes what has been lost.

In a country falling deep into the rabbit hole of fascism and authoritarianism, it is more important than ever to understand that the opponents and perpetrators aren’t our own neighbors but are those who live behind the heavy gates and 50-foot tall hedges. We mustn't give in to their wily machinations and need to recognize who truly reaps the rewards of our divisions, who are fortified by generational wealth and a calculated detachment from the consequences of their decisions. Eddington’s terror doesn’t come from the supernatural, but from its brutal familiarity because as like the most effective horror stories, it peels back the wallpaper of daily life to reveal the rot festering underneath. The manipulation, fabricated hysteria, and willingness of institutions to look away isn’t fantasy but exists just outside your window, just slightly exaggerated, and like any good horror, it begs the question of what happens when we stop resisting. In this sense, Eddington is a warning not about monsters lurking in the shadows, but about the very human ones who sell us fear and feast on our silence. Horror is never just about fear but also about catharsis, about naming the thing that haunts us so we can confront it. And in that spirit, the answer is clear: resistance begins when we recognize our shared humanity and refuse to be divided

Works Cited:

“Eddington movie review & film summary (2025).” Roger Ebert, 2025, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eddington-movie-review-2025. Accessed 10 October 2025. 

Elbeshbishi, Sarah. “West Virginia lawmakers eliminated local authority to regulate data centers and similar projects.” AP News, 4 August 2025, https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-charleston-data-management-and-storage-legislation-general-news-b33c051439bd3694ee3f2b04981f4555.

Cyd Okum is a freshman at Barnard College studying Film and Art History. She loves film, listening to music, and painting.

@cydokum