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It’s a satire without laughs. A fright movie without jump scares. A western without an obvious villain. A social commentary minus a moral compass. On balance, “Eddington” might best be described as a fractured memory piece, a not-so-funhouse reflection of a painful era.

Set in the summer of 2020, the first COVID year, it features many elements of what we all recall from pandemic times — masks, physical distancing, paranoia — but it also inspires a sense of wonder that COVID and its associated social tumult really happened at all. Wonder turns to a collective shudder as we contemplate connections between the disease back then and the global ills of today.

After exploring horror and fantasy for his first three full-length films — “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid” — writer-director Aster anchors himself in bleak but recognizable reality for his fourth feature, which takes place in the fictional New Mexico town of Eddington, population 2,435.

It’s a dusty place on the edge of normality, a description appropriate for the first inhabitant we encounter: a barefoot, bedraggled and mentally ill drifter named Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr.) who rages incoherently about the world. He’s certainly timely. Everybody in Eddington is dealing with their own personal hell, made all the hotter by the deprivations of COVID.

Sheriff Joe Cross, played by a bearded and bespectacled Joaquin Phoenix, is an old-school lawman who doesn’t talk much and who prefers persuasion to enforcement. He’s not a fan of mask protocols — he uses an inhaler that suggests breathing issues — and frankly doubts whether COVID has even made it to Eddington. He intervenes when a grocer forbids a maskless senior, who also has respiratory problems, from entering his store.

“There’s a way to do it,” Joe insists, as he defends the senior and assists him with his shopping, all while not wearing a mask himself. Joe might seem more of an authority figure if he wasn’t clutching a jumbo package of Goldfish crackers as he speaks.

His idiosyncratic approach to law and order puts him at odds with the town’s smooth-talking mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who obeys all the COVID edicts. Ted, the single dad of a teenage son (Matt Gomez Hidaka), wants to drag Eddington into the 21st century by supporting the construction of a giant new AI data centre. It will create many jobs but also irrevocably change the nature of this quirky desert town. “We can’t go back, we can only go better,” Ted’s re-election campaign billboard pitches.

Change-averse Joe naturally objects to the data centre, partly due to his conservative nature but also due to his long-standing antipathy toward Ted. Joe’s wife, Louise (Emma Stone), briefly dated Ted 20 years ago and although Ted insists nothing of any consequence happened, Joe suspects otherwise.

Louise doesn’t have much to say about the matter or anything else. Still suffering the effects of a troubled childhood, she has little warmth for the perpetually glum Joe. She spends her day making strange dolls and following the charismatic ravings of online influencer and conspiracy theorist Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler).

Louise’s mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), lives with her and Joe, and she likewise is caught up in the alternate realities of Peak and other online agitators, people who believe the Sasquatch is real, the Deep State rules and the Titanic sinking was no accident.

His pride hurt and his dander up, Joe decides to run for mayor against Ted. He enlists his two reluctant deputies, Guy Tooley (Luke Grimes) and Michael Cooke (Micheal Ward), to act as his campaign advisers. Soon Joe is driving his slogan-festooned squad car through town, blaring campaign propaganda from his loudspeaker. Meanwhile, tensions are erupting throughout the town as Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), a white local teenager, starts leading Black Lives Matter protests, blocking traffic.

There’s no cause too remote for Eddington. Accusations fly about “Antifa” false-flag operations, encroaching wokeness, sexual deviancy and other alleged threats — and then conspiracy king Peak decides to pay the town a visit.

Such civic mayhem would be fertile narrative ground in other small-town films — think of last year’s “Rebel Ridge” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” from 2017 — but Aster whirls it all into a maelstrom of angry farce.

He’s assembled a brilliant cast and created strong characters but hasn’t given them much of a back story or much of anything to say, and there’s no reason to care about any of them. Aster slices into both the hysterical right and the smug left, which is all to the good, but his satiric sword has a dull blade.

Everything descends into violent chaos in the third act, a situation more likely to prompt shrugs than tears.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji’s lens doesn’t flatter its subjects. It courts the dusk and dust of Aster’s world. Key scenes are shot through windows, windshields and other barriers, or viewed through computer and smartphone screens, concealing as much as they reveal.

Composers Daniel Pemberton and Bobby Krlic craft a score that is at once ominous and playful, as if the soundtrack itself is holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

And what of the AI data centre, the source of much of this ferment? A glimpse of the fortress-like facility, way off yonder gobbling electricity and water as it crunches info in its ceaseless effort to replace humans, suggests the town and the world have more to worry about than a new virus.