After making his name in horror with the admirably unhinged Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster continues his move away from the genre, following up divisive tragicom Beau Is Afraid with Eddington. Set in the titular New Mexico town during the covid pandemic, it focuses on the town’s sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix as an asthmatic who refuses to wear a mask in public), and combines western traditions and social satire to only intermittently interesting effect.

Joe has long-standing beef with the local mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who he opts to run against in the upcoming election, enlisting the help of his idiotic deputies (Micheal Ward and Luke Grimes) to pen some poorly punctuated campaign material and rustle up support. Domestically, things are a slog: Joe’s depressed wife Louise (Emma Stone) spends her time making creepy dolls which she sells on Etsy, and his conspiracy theorist mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell) never stops talking. Also in the mix are a dashing cult leader (Austin Butler), deranged homeless man (Clifton Collins Jr), and mounting Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd.

If things sound tense, they’re not, at least not sufficiently, as weakly drawn characters and a surfeit of incoherent ideas combine over the desperately overlong duration. Phoenix is typically outstanding, but his floundering protagonist simply isn’t a compelling focus. The incorporation of western tropes to explore the competing crazinesses of the modern world has its moments, and there’s a smattering of success in the satire. It all gets highly hysterical in the film’s final, explosive throes, as you’d expect from Aster, but by then you may be long past caring.

Eddington is in cinemas now.