But flying home from Denver the other night, I clicked on Eddington and never looked away.
It was bizarre. That’s the simplest word for it. But it was also strangely fascinating, the kind of film that doesn’t let itself fade into the background. It demanded attention in a way most movies don’t, especially in a setting where distractions are easy and commitment is rare.
What stayed with me wasn’t just the strangeness of the story, but the uneasy sense of recognition. We move so fast these days that recent history slips away almost immediately. We can tell endless stories about the Civil War or World War II, but we say surprisingly little about what just happened. Watching Eddington, I found myself thinking: did we really act that stupid?
Not just in how we handled COVID itself, but in how quickly bad ideas spread. Faster than the virus, really. Fear outran facts. Suspicion replaced trust. Conspiracy filled the gaps where patience and humility used to live. The film doesn’t argue these points so much as hold up a mirror and refuse to look away.
The setting matters. Eddington takes place in a small New Mexico town, far removed from the coastal epicenters and cable-news chaos most of us associate with that season of life. That distance makes the message sharper, not softer. The madness didn’t stay centralized. It traveled. It settled into quiet places. It took root where people assumed they were insulated from it.
At the center of the story is a power struggle between a small-town sheriff and a mayor, but it quickly becomes clear that neither authority nor rebellion offers much clarity. Everyone is isolated in his own way, cut off not just from one another but from restraint itself. Identity hardens. Certainty grows louder. Performance replaces judgment. By the time violence erupts, it feels sudden, but not surprising. The film has been heading there all along.
That turn toward violence feels intentional and uncomfortable. There’s no grand speech, no cinematic ramp-up, no moral release. It’s messy and disorienting, which feels honest. The movie seems to suggest that when everything becomes noise, when authority is rejected without being replaced by wisdom, violence starts to feel like the only remaining language.
Ari Aster, who wrote and directed the film, has been criticized by some for offering no solutions here, and I understand that frustration. Eddington doesn’t tell you what to think or how to fix anything. It simply shows what happens when a society moves too fast to remember, too fast to reflect, and too fast to listen.
The reception has been divided. Some see it as a necessary cultural snapshot, a modern Western about civic collapse. Others find it bleak, uncomfortable, and too close to wounds that haven’t healed yet. Both reactions feel appropriate. This isn’t a film designed to reassure or entertain in the traditional sense. It’s meant to unsettle.
What I took away from it is a quiet warning. When speed replaces reflection, when certainty replaces humility, when performance replaces leadership, violence stops being unthinkable. History doesn’t always arrive with uniforms, monuments, or decades of distance. Sometimes it shows up almost immediately, before we’ve even decided what to call it.
From the air, the world looks calm and orderly. Towns feel small. Problems seem distant. Eddington is a reminder that what looks stable from far away can be deeply fractured up close.
And maybe the most unsettling detail comes near the end, when outsiders arrive and everything finally goes fully kinetic. It would be easy to blame them, to say the violence came from somewhere else. But the movie doesn’t let you do that. The outsiders didn’t bring the violence with them. The town had already built the runway. Long before anyone landed, fear had replaced trust, certainty had replaced humility, and force had started to feel reasonable. The plane didn’t change the outcome. It just revealed how ready the place already was. That truth was jarring and my plane touched down just as that realization haunted my imagination. The irony of that brewed in my brain all night after that.
It wasn’t an easy watch. It wasn’t meant to be. But it’s one I’m glad I didn’t turn off. It has some really disturbing moments, but it captures this insane ride we are on right now.... and the need for structure, respect, humility, compassion, and truth has never been more evident.
Isaiah 56:10–11
His watchmen are blind;
they are all without knowledge;
they are all silent dogs;
they cannot bark,
dreaming, lying down,
loving to slumber.
[11] The dogs have a mighty appetite;
they never have enough.
But they are shepherds who have no understanding;
they have all turned to their own way,
each to his own gain, one and all. (ESV)
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