[Movie Review] Welcome to Eddington

The header image was generated with Nano Banana. Key words such as Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, social distancing, and SNS are scattered in the background. "Stay Safe" is a string of text the AI generated on its own, but it feels like it really understands the context.

This is the third film I've seen by director Ari Aster. I watched it at Shinjuku Toho Cinemas. It was almost full, and I was in the front row. It might be the first time I've ever eaten popcorn while watching a movie in a theater.

The setting is New Mexico in 2020. The spread of the coronavirus, daily conflicts over social distancing and masks, the incident in Minneapolis, the protests that spread across the United States, the confusion of information due to the development of social media, and the sense of justice and desire for approval that everyone carries. How do things change based on individual actions and statements? I felt like I was presented with the worst-case scenario imaginable. As for my impressions, "interesting" is closer to the nuance than "fun."

Although it draws a line from obvious horror films like "Hereditary" and "Midsommar," I felt a commonality in that "lives are put at risk by distorted values within a closed community."

In the end, the scariest thing isn't ghosts or demons, but "humans."