Ari Aster’s Scapegoat Already Hints at the Director’s Signature Obsessions

Ari Aster recently seems to be diverting from horror, but from the “horror” itself. From Hereditary (2018) to Eddington (2025), we have seen him escaping genre labels, moving from typical dread to satire/political paranoia territory.

According to Variety, Ari Aster is writing and directing his next movie, Scapegoat, which is considered a follow-up to Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal’s starrer, Eddington. The film has confirmed Scarlett Johansson in the cast. She is also starring in Mike Flanagan’s new take on The Exorcist and the latest drama Paper Tiger.​

Eddington is a dark Western dramedy released a year ago and is set in the early days of COVID-19. A small standoff in a small town in New Mexico, where “Black Lives Matter” protests were ongoing, is the center of the plot. A rivalry between a sheriff and a mayor remained in the spotlight.​

No plot details or release date for Scapegoat have been officially announced. Lars Knudsen is producing the film under his Square Peg label. A24 distributes the film, which backed Aster’s first four films as well.​

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How will Scarlett Johansson fit into Ari Aster’s Scapegoat?​

Scarlett Johansson seems to be making unique film choices after leaving behind her Marvel career, where she portrayed Black Widow for years. She had been clear about her future goals: Black Widow wouldn’t return after fans couldn’t stop theorizing about how she could make a comeback.​

Though she has been busy filming Mike Flanagan’s new Exorcist movie, she also put on quite a show with Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025). Her character was hailed as the franchise desperately needed a different direction, moving away from the traditional dinosaurs-eating-people storyline and giving the Jurassic-verse a female-led film.​

Johansson has been carefully picking up roles recently, as she wanted to diversify her career with her role in The Exorcist and now Ari Aster’s Scapegoat. Knowing that it is Aster’s film, we know it would be psychologically intense and emotionally disorienting, like Midsommar (2019).  ​

Aster’s films demand vulnerability in unusually uncomfortable ways. His characters cry openly, panic publicly, collapse mentally, and experience emotional humiliation with almost theatrical intensity. Johansson’s entering that environment suggests Scapegoat may lean even further into psychological discomfort rather than conventional horror.

Having said that, Aster previously mentioned three possibilities for his next film: a spiritual sequel to Eddington, a horror movie, and a sci-fi adaptation. But if Scapegoat is known to be a follow-up to Eddington, then it could possess a spiritual storyline that matches the plot details of the original story.

Story predictions for Scapegoat​

This leaves us with several predictions for the story, which include:​

• Scapegoat could be about public blame: Since Eddington depicted modern America as a civilization psychologically incapable of processing reality anymore, it descends into paranoia, and now the society chooses to blame someone else. Aster may explore what happens when society needs a victim.
• Johansson’s casting might be strategic for the blaming story: Since Aster is fond of psychologically disturbing stories and Johansson has played emotionally isolated women trapped between identity and perception, just as in Under the Skin (2013) and Lost in Translation (2003), Scapegoat could involve her social judgment or a woman falsely accused of something, a political target, a psychologically unraveling social outcast, etc.

• Aster may return to horror through satire: Scapegoat could be less supernatural horror and more psychological/social horror. It could investigate drifting away from typical horror tropes and delve into political satire and absurdism. Since Eddington retained dread, tension, psychological discomfort, and emotional violence, Scapegoat could present as a hybrid of collective blame drama and social paranoid thriller.
• Scapegoat could be Aster’s most political film yet: It could dig into societal chaos, power abuse, persecution, social punishment, mob mentality, ideological violence, media satire, or institutional manipulation. Eddington became subject to mild criticism of being unfocused; Scapegoat could overcome this shortfall, become tighter and more psychologically direct.

Hence, Scapegoat could be a definitive film about the collapse of shared reality, a society so psychologically fractured that it destroys people simply to maintain emotional order. It would make Scapegoat a natural continuation of Eddington—not in story but in a worldwide view where fear spreads socially, communities need enemies, and individuals become sacrifices for collective anxiety.