Eddington City Limits

Ari Aster’s bracing and hilariously terrifying new vision locates all the anxiety and hypocrisy of this weird American life in the microcosm of one tiny southwestern town: a powder keg known as Eddington. Following the tradition of films about simmering violence located within the pressure cooker atmosphere of single towns or cities, Eddington nimbly updates the classical western with panache while looking aghast at our moment. This series, co-programmed with Aster, features movies that both directly inspired or in some ways echo the escalating madness of Eddington, depicting communities ready to spill over into bloodlust or vengeance and enclosed worlds so given to conspiracy and obsession that there’s no longer any sense of coherent reality. Eddington may reflect the almost science-fiction feel of our through-the-looking-glass 21st century, but, as these films prove, human nature was ever thus.