Papaya_Horror

Describing Eddington as a neo-western might be the most fitting way to summarise Ari Aster's 2025 dark comedy-drama-though even that hardly scratches the surface.

That said, I felt I needed a full ten minutes of silence after the credits rolled, just to process what I'd witnessed.

It's an Ari Aster film, after all, so if you're familiar with his work, you'll know to expect a whirlwind of emotional and thematic disarray. But Eddington isn't just messy-it's exquisite, unfiltered chaos.

If you've seen the trailer, don't be misled. It barely teases the disorienting spiral that unfolds. The story kicks off in May 2020, amidst the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What begins as a snapshot of public hysteria-conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers, and the fear-soaked atmosphere-rapidly morphs into something darker and more disturbingly real.

We've spent the past five years collectively unmoored-adrift in chaos, where appearances deceive and identities dissolve. It sometimes feels like a failed social mutation-one born from freedom pushed to its breaking point-an evolutionary misstep we fought to achieve, only to have it turn against us.

Let's be clear: freedom is a vital human right. But when it becomes indistinguishable from anarchic self-destruction, something has clearly gone awry.

At its core, Eddington follows a standoff between small-town sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), set in the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico.

Their clash is both personal and political-complicated by Garcia's fraught history with Cross's wife, Louise (Emma Stone), and mother-in-law, Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell).

Aster revisits his obsession with overbearing maternal figures, folding that tension seamlessly into the wider conflict as the two men find themselves on opposing sides of the mask debate.

The film is deliberately provocative, often hollow by design, and it's a difficult piece to review. You'll laugh, you'll wince, you'll question what you're watching-and you certainly won't find it comforting.

Aster touches on themes like racial division, though arguably without much new to say. The Black Lives Matter movement is clearly present in the film's DNA, but its representation feels muddled-more gestured at than fully explored.

Before it can fully engage with those ideas, the film veers off into another subplot filled with irrationality, violence, and distraction-perhaps intentionally mirroring how public attention shifted in real time.

What he does capture is the paranoia, anxiety, and social fragmentation that exploded when lockdowns began and the world collectively panicked. He blends it into a fever dream of confusion and satire, offering no answers-just raw sensation.

Much of the chaos is filtered through the lens of social media, which becomes the film's true stage. It's where the news is curated, where lies take root, and where misinformation thrives.

To emphasize this aspect, the film extensively employs the screenlife technique, blending traditional storytelling with found-footage and mockumentary styles. And let me tell you, it works remarkably well, enhancing the overall sense of realism.

Paranoia spreads like wildfire, jokes mutate into threats, and morality dissolves into a game of psychological warfare, disinformation, and mass manipulation.

Unsurprisingly, Eddington has sharply divided critics-and will likely do the same with audiences. Expect fiery debates. Some will praise its fearless ambition; others will dismiss it as bloated, incoherent, or pretentious. And honestly, that may be exactly what Aster intended.

As always, his visual storytelling is exceptional. Darius Khondji's cinematography (Uncut Gems, The Immigrant) balances the film's absurdity and dread with a sharp, immersive eye. Lucian Johnston's editing keeps the pacing surprisingly taut, especially for a film that thrives on disorientation.

Aster's visual language for violence remains as potent as ever. When revenge time comes, it hits with darkly funny moments-especially during 'The Antifa Massacre,' which delivers shocking laughs and gory satisfaction in true Ari Aster fashion.

But after all that-did I like it?

There's brilliance in Eddington-but perhaps brilliance trapped in a maze of its own ambition, leaving something essential just out of reach.

The ride remains undeniably compelling. Ari Aster remains one of the most fascinating directors working today.

But, as with Beau Is Afraid, he tests the limits of narrative and patience. There's brilliance in Eddington, but there's also a sense of something missing-maybe too much of everything, all at once.

This isn't a comfort film to watch. It won't leave you with a clear head. In fact, you'll probably leave the cinema clutching your skull, trying to piece together the fragments.

My advice? Watch it with a good friend-or a few-who appreciate psychologically demanding cinema.

Because once the screen fades to black, the real film begins-in your head, and in the conversations that follow.

"Obex" (2025), Albert Birney's latest, is less a film in the traditional sense than a mesmeric, multimedia experience-an immersive hallucination that catapults us into a nostalgic yet unsettling reimagining of 1987 Baltimore.

It evokes the aesthetic of early home-computer video games-a love letter to a forgotten digital past and to the global legion of 'old nerds' who once lived inside pixelated universes.

With stark black-and-white cinematography-at times evocative of "Eraserhead"-and lo-fi visual textures reminiscent of Space Invaders and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Birney concocts a hypnotic blend of analog dread and digital dreaming.

The horror-adjacent quality lingers with eeriness, disquiet, paranoia, and technological hauntings, using experimental editing techniques, retro video game tricks and typical 1980s special effects.

Especially near the end, when a cascade of skulls appears onscreen-a moment that distills the essence of '80s zombie comedy-horror and indie horror games alike.

The plot, if one can call it that, is deceptively simple: Conor Marsh, a withdrawn loner, ekes out a living by "redrawing" photographs on his Macintosh using typographic symbols.

He hasn't left his home in years, relying on his neighbour Mary (played with quiet empathy by Callie Hernandez) to fetch his groceries. But Conor's self-imposed solitude is shattered when he loads a mysterious game called OBEX.

After his beloved dog Sandy disappears, the lines between reality and gameplay begin to dissolve, drawing Conor into the bizarre inner world of OBEX-a retro-futuristic realm where the surreal logic of old-school video games takes hold.

But as with most of Birney's work, plot is merely scaffolding. "Obex" defies classification. It is, at its core, what one might call "movie-video-art"-an audiovisual artefact as much at home in a gallery installation as it is in a cinema.

Viewers may find themselves hypnotised, as though standing inside a looping museum piece that mutates with each glance.

The film is anchored in a singular thematic concern: alienation. This ingenious fantasy explores the emotional hazards of finding comfort in screens while avoiding real human connection.

Whether glued to his monitor or the eerie vertical TV totem that dominates his living room, Conor is in a constant state of retreat-seeking solace from the messiness of life through synthetic distraction.

Birney presents an idiosyncratic vision of a life swallowed by media. There's a disturbing undercurrent here-a lamentation for a society that fetishises its own digital decay.

The film doesn't just comment on smartphones or the internet per se, but rather on their capacity to fracture time, distort intimacy, and create portals into existential voids.

"Obex" bears thematic kinship with Jane Schoenbrun's "I Saw the TV Glow" (2024), though I'd argue Birney's effort is far more cohesive and affecting.

Both films are entrancing and deeply personal works, warning of the psychic toll media addiction can take.

Yet the film suggests a glimmer of hope-not in chasing emotional fulfilment through digital proxies, but in confronting the analog world we've left behind.

"Obex" doesn't just invite us to play-it dares us to unplug. In a culture drowning in feedback loops and curated selves, Birney suggests the ultimate rebellion may be returning to the real.

Horror thrives in confined, singular locations-and "Hallow Road" is no exception.

While technically set across a few places, the core of the film unfolds almost entirely inside a car, driven by tense, unsettling dialogue that rarely lets up.

It's hard to discuss this film without revealing too much, but that's the thrill of film criticism: unpacking themes without spoiling the experience.

Directed by Babak Anvari, "Hallow Road" fits neatly into the "dashcam cinema"-a horror sub-genre where most of the story unfolds through dashboard or onboard camera footage, heightening realism and claustrophobia.

The film's strength lies in the performances of its three leads: Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as a married couple, and Megan McDonnell as their daughter, Alice. Together, they balance parental instinct with quiet dread, delivering performances that emotionally anchor the film.

When Alice calls her mother in a panic-having hit and killed a girl on the remote Hallow Road in the fictional town of Ashfolk-it sets off a psychological mystery told almost entirely through a phone call and in-car dialogue.

The cinematography is cloaked in shadow, using the night not just as a setting, but as a symbol of the unknown-where every frame hums with mystery, suppressed fear, and the creeping sense that something is just out of sight.

As a viewer, you're confined with the parents-just their car, a phone, and Alice's disembodied voice guiding you through a spiral of guilt, fear, and confusion.

The film explores how language can disturb more deeply than imagery, and how those we trust most can become sources of dread.

"Hallow Road" is a haunting meditation on parenting, moral ambiguity, and the fragile boundary between safety and threat.

It's the kind of horror that doesn't scream-it lingers, whispering long after the screen fades to black.