Covid tensions are running high in the small New Mexico town at the center of Eddington, the new film from writer-director Ari Aster starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler.

The film looks like a lot more straightforward one than Aster’s last pairing with Phoenix, the critically praised box office letdown Beau Is Afraid. But given that it’s an Ari Aster movie, expect dark twists.

The film, which premieres at Cannes and comes to theaters July 18, carries the tagline “hindsight is 2020” — that’s the long-ago year when the pandemic began — and an image of buffalo running off a cliff. Indigenous people used to hunt and kill plains buffalo by chasing them into a panicked cliff jump. Panic was also the order of the day during much of 2020.

The Eddington poster. A24

The Eddington Trailer, From Ari Aster

The Eddington trailer follows the format of Instagram scrolling, and makes its general focus clear from the start with a reference to “that lab in Wuhan, China.” Then we scroll to Phoenix as Sheriff in Sevilla County, New Mexico who explains that the people of Eddington “like guns” — an apparent warning to anyone planning to take them away.

From there we scroll to Butler’s preachery influencer telling his flock that “your pain is not a coincidence — you are not a coincidence.”

And then we swipe to a sincere-looking Emma Stone character “speaking now to deny my husband’s announcement yesterday” as the string section swoons.

Then some quick references to Michael Jackson and 9/11-adjacent conspiracy theories, and the heartening site of Pedro Pascal as Mayor Ted Garcia, who is ready to “keep Eddington safe.”

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By the end of our scroll, we learn that Phoenix’s sheriff has assaulted a protestor in a town “rocked by murders.”

Eddington is not, as far as we can tell, a real town, and Sevilla County is not a real county. But the film shot last year in the real New Mexico locations in and around Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Truth or Consequences. When it was announced last year by the New Mexico Film Office, Eddington was described as following a “small-town New Mexico sheriff with higher aspirations.”

In addition to Phoenix, Pascal, Stone and Butler, the film also stars Luke Grimes (Yellowstone), Deirdre O’Connell (The Requin), Micheal Ward (Top Boy), Clifton Collins Jr. (Jockey), William Belleau (Killers of the Flower Moon), Cameron Mann (Mare of Easttown), Matt Gomez Hidaka (Silo) and Amélie Hoeferle (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes).

The large-scale production employed over 300 New Mexicans, including 230 crew members, 59 principal actors, and 105 background talent.

Ari Aster wrote, directed, and produced alongside Lars Knudsen under their Square Peg banner, and Academy Award nominee Darius Khondji served as the director of photography. Eddington is Aster’s fourth film for A24, which also released Aster’s Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023).

Eddington joins a Cannes lineup that includes such other highly anticipated films as The Phoenician Scheme by Wes Anderson, Alpha by Julia Ducournau, The History of Sound by Oliver Hermanus, New Wave by Richard Linklater, and The Mastermind by Kelly Reichardt. The festival will be held May 13-24.

The new film arrives a week before another high-profile Pedro Pascal film, Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which debuts on July 25 and features Pascal as stretchy inventor Reed Richards. The trailer arrived Monday the day after the Season 2 premiere of his HBO series The Last of Us. Suffice it to say, he’s having a very busy 2025.

Eddington arrives in theaters July 18 from A24.