If that sounds like a lot of controversy to pack into a single film, well, that’s Aster’s intent. If something even more sinister slips through the cracks, that’s also his intent. Aster sat down with The A.

A24 is known for its prestige arthouse films, but in its early days as a distributor, it made most of its money from elevated horror films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar. Over a decade in, the ambitions of A24 and Aster have expanded beyond genre film. But for both, the more recent results have been mixed.

The first and maybe only true jump scare in Ari Aster’s “Eddington” comes right at the start. A barefoot old man trudges down the center of a road running through an empty Western town. He’s ranting and incoherently raving as he climbs a craggy hill silhouetted against a twilight sky. He gazes, or maybe glares, out at the town below.

Writer-director Ari Aster's fiendishly funny film stars Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as a sheriff and mayor on politically opposing sides in a well-off community during the summer of 2020. "'Eddington' has something to offend (or annoy) just about everybody,

Travis Hopsin of Punch Drunk Critics says the fear surrounding the pandemic, Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests that’s depicted in Eddington is “designed to enrage us,” but the most terrifying part of Ari Aster’s film is how accurate it is. The critic says:

When Ari Aster went to his friends’ homes for childhood sleepovers, his dread would escalate as the situation became clear: These people were too wholesome. They said devoted things to one another and sat down for dutiful family dinners.

Set in early 2020, the bleak, black comedy takes on COVID, masks, BLM, police violence, Antifa, white guilt, white grievance and the growth of toxic online influencers.

Hereditary” and “Midsommar” director Ari Aster takes on contemporary America in “Eddington.” Joaquin Phoenix stars as a local sheriff in a fictional New Mexico town in May 2020, a time