It’s crazy, the number of horror films that have been posted in theaters for some time.
It looks like there are 10 new ones per week.
All young filmmakers make their start in horror: Zach Cregger (Weapons), You West (X), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), Julia Ducournau (Titanium), Pascal Plant (The red rooms)…
It must be said that horror is the perfect kind to talk about the problems that overwhelm our society.
Racism, sexism, toxic masculinity, the cult of youth, etc.
Un western modernity
One of my favorite directors, Ari Aster, took his first steps in horror cinema.
But after turning Hereditary (the biggest horror film since The Exorcistin my humble opinion) and Midsummerhe said to himself: “Why invent monsters when reality is more terrifying than anything we can imagine?”
So he made a film on the horror of family relationships (Beau Is Afraidon a guilty mother who psychologically castrates her son) and a film on horrifying ills that threaten our civilization.
It is from this last film that I want to talk to you.
His title? Eddington.
This is the name of a small town located in the middle of a desert.
The action takes place in the middle of Covid pandemic.
There is the mayor (Pedro Pascal), who wants to impose the port of the mask everywhere, and the sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix), who finds the health measures more dangerous than the virus they are supposed to fight.
In order to abolish the regulations forcing people to wear the mask, the sheriff decides to go to the municipal elections.
How a company collapses
From this classic canvas, which recalls the westerns of yesteryear, Ari Aster created a terrifying fable on our time.
The more the film advances, the more it goes in the ball and the more chaotic the situation.
First, there is the pandemic. Promasques and antimasques.
Then there are the conspirators.
Antifas.
Anti -racists, who see racism everywhere.
Activists who want to define the police.
Populists.
Les wokes.
Influencers.
THE crackpots Right, which are convinced that the left is a group of pedophiles.
Thugs.
Sanre-bounted with various mental health problems.
People who spend their time with their eyes riveted on the screen of their cell phone, and who believe everything they see on the internet.
Add to that gunsmiths who make a fortune by selling assault rifles to anyone, and you have a company on the edge of the collapse.
A bomb
Eddingtonit is Denys Arcand on acid.
Ascand takes a semi-ideal look, half-amused on our society, Ari Aster does not laugh.
Our time is a horror film, he tells us. If it continues like that, everything will fart.
A community, the word says, is a group of people who share common values.
However, we have nothing in common.
Society is divided and polarized like never before.
And everyone is rabid.
We are all sitting on a bomb and each of us wants to light the wick.