Midsommar director Ari Aster is taking on a different kind of horror in his new movie Eddington: the year 2020. The trailer opens with voices talking pandemic conspiracy theories while some unseen person does a depressing bit of doomscrolling. Once they get to Instagram, every post is related to what’s happening in the small town of Eddington. It’s not enough to put together a full picture, but it does give us a glimpse of the main cast: Joaquin Phoenix as the sheriff, Joe Cross; Pedro Pascal as the town mayor; Austin Butler as a weird sort of preacher; and Emma Stone as Louise Cross, who speaks “to deny” her husband’s announcement; presumably she’s playing the wife of Phoenix’s character.
The closest we get to anything about the plot is a caption that reads “‘Law and order’ sheriff assaults protestor in town rocked by murders.”
In turns out, at the end of this one-minute trailer, it’s Phoenix doing the doomscrolling. And that’s all there is to see. Deadline called the film a “pandemic-set Western thriller,” which is a whole lot to mash up. Eddington follows Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, which also starred Phoenix.
Eddington also stars Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Cameron Mann, Matt Gomez Hidaka, and Amélie Hoeferle. We’ll presumably find out more about it after it premieres at the Cannes Film Festival next month—or you can just wait until July 18th, when it lands in theaters, to see what these pandemic murders are all about.
